A Girl's World
by Dixie Cross
Summary: A modern twist on GWTW. Tenuously follows book plot. Episodic style. All scenes take place roughly "now" no matter how much time elapses in the story. Chapter 28: Epi-epi-epilogue
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: BBQ**

* * *

_Explanation of timeline: I got this idea by wondering what would happen if I plopped GWTW scene (fill in the blank) _ into 'today.' To try and keep the characters' characters the same in essentials but current to the times. Yet as the vignettes progressed, they ballooned with plot and story. Not my original intention. I decided to go ahead and keep all the scenes in 'today' no matter how much time passes in the 'story.' In short, the characters will move through space, not time._

_Question: How would adding two hundred plus years change the universe? Answer: YOLO! (Yelled, of course.)_

"You've got to be freakin' kidding me."

"I would never joke about something like this."

Scarlett crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, blowing a gum bubble that snapped loudly. Ashley shoved his hands in his pockets, chewing his lip and wiggling his ankles. Pathetic he couldn't even look her in the eye.

"Yeah, well, a joke would be better. You should've just texted me." She shook her head and threw up her hands. "You're breaking up with me? With _me_?"

Ashley scooted back against the wall, knocking his dad's prized "Best in Show" trophy off its pedestal.

"Well, no, I mean—we weren't even going out." He said, snagging the trophy with his pinky finger and clutching it to his chest. "You know it was only—"

"Oh, right. I forgot. Friends with benefits."

She popped her gum against the roof of her mouth. It cracked like a gun and he jumped. He hugged the trophy more tightly. Seriously? He could even look hot when he was cowering behind 'Prance in the Rain's' highest honor.

"You think that's going to protect you or something? Maybe you should go get your precious little Pomeranian as a guard dog."

He clenched his jaw and his grey, drowsy eyes lit up. Good. The jab had bothered him.

"I don't need protection but I do need," he craned his neck to make sure no one was passing by down the hallway. The music from the party drummed outside and some hollers from his frat buddies drifted in from the back yard. "I do need to know that this isn't going to get around."

"Who am I going to tell? Your sister? My sister?"

He looked guilty. Too guilty. Cheater guilty. Everything clicked. With a nasty, screeching finality.

"You're hooking back up with Melanie, aren't you?"

The trophy fell. It clanked hollowly to the ground and Scarlett stepped over it, pushing her finger into his stupid cashmere sweater. What twenty-two year old guy wears cashmere?

"No…no, I'm…It's…" he stammered, muttering a million four letter words out the corner of his mouth.

"You are! You lying, son of a—"

"I never stopped dating her in the first place! Okay! I mean I thought we were on a real break, but I guess it was just a…a pause or something. Like, I don't know a commercial break."

"You're telling me I was your "we'll be back after these messages" spring break fling?"

"Hey, you said it was just for fun!"

The cute, little puppy look he was doing couldn't help him now. No matter how much she still wanted him. He must have known it too because he went from "big, tender dollar coins" to "Scream 5 horror-eyes" and spun away from the wall.

"Now, let's be mature about this Scarlett."

"Mature? I don't have to be mature about this. You should have thought of that before you slept with a sixteen year old, you dirty pervert!"

He yelped. Yelped or his much-longer scream was cut short when he tripped over the trophy and face-planted into the overstuffed bean bag.

Angry and ashamed the sight of his khakied-butt sticking straight up in the air and his perfect windswept-gelled hair now mussed made her bust up laughing. She couldn't stop it. Tears started rolling down her beet-red face. She choked on the laughter, and her gum. That made her laugh harder. Ashley slowly pulled himself up, shaking his head and straightening his designer clothes.

"Yeah, real mature Scarlett."

She swiped the tears from her face and tried to catch her breath.

"I wish I'd had my phone on. Raif or Stu would've loved to post it on Youtube. The great Ashley Wilkes on all fours!"

"Done yet?" He scooped up the still-rocking trophy and set it gently on its stand, failing to sound indifferent. "I'm going back to the party."

She didn't stop giggling until he walked out of the library. When the door clicked shut, she started to cry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Bizarre**

* * *

_Question: What do you call a Male Cougar? Answer: Manther. Seriously. That's the best we can come up with. If that's the case then I want to start calling Cougars "Haguars"_

"Usually I'm not so easy to forget."

Ugh! Who was this guy? And why was he talking to her? He looked like he was in his thirties. He was hot—like George Clooney or some other old dude hottie but still! Thirties?

"Sorry, maybe I've had one too many tonight, but your face doesn't ring a bell."

"Aren't you too young to be drinking?"

"If I am, you're too old to be asking."

Scarlett slurped some more of her pomegranate martini and tried to ignore his laughter. Or his hot breath tickling her neck and making her think things she had no right thinking about. Get a grip girl! She leaned away from the bar and winked at the bartender. He was some greasy French guy who always catered these charity shindigs of her Aunt Pitty's. Since she was sixteen he'd been sneaking her drinks. A sweet word or a chaste peck and bam he would supply her with strawberry mojitos, delicious peach fizzes or pomegranate martinis. She would sip and he would whisper dirty nothings in that silky, stringy voice. It was an unspoken agreement. This other guy was messing it up. Raoul looked annoyed and if she didn't leave now he might not get her another cocktail.

"Catch you later Raoul," she waved with just her fingers and weaved in and out of the dance floor. She hoped she was leaving the unwanted admirer behind.

Ducking around sequenced dresses and heavy tuxedos she smiled and nodded at the few faces she recognized. Aunt Pitty was a prude but her charity buddies sure knew how to throw a party. They were the hottest tickets in town, a guaranteed entry into rubbing shoulders and hobnobbing with Atlanta's elite. Raves with as much alcohol and none of the police. Scarlett realized she hadn't escaped her Clooney-creeper when she heard him cough from behind her. Apparently these parties had as many dirt bags as real raves.

"Look," she said, spinning around and slopping her drink all over the floor. "I don't know who you are but I think you should go find some Cougar or Botox mama to prowl around with."

Again he just laughed.

"You must be legal by now," he leaned in and his cologne wafted into her nostrils. Wow! He smelled good. Really good. Expensive, sexy good. He didn't move away and so she had to. The body odor of some flailing society bigwig to her right cleared her head.

"Hey, news flash, if you're worried about legality, you're too old to be asking."

He frowned and for a moment actually looked serious. His dark eyes raked up and down her body. She could _feel_ them undressing her. Goosebumps prickled all over and she suddenly wished she'd worn Melly's shrug after all. It wouldn't have covered her thighs but it could have given her some coverage for her cleavage. She usually loved guys checking her out—that's why she'd worn this tight black dress in the first place. But this guy wasn't just admiring her assets; he was measuring and weighing them.

"Done yet?" Scarlett fidgeted, tugging down her dress. She was glad the pulsing blue light hid her blush.

"Oh, that remains to be seen." He grinned, perfect white teeth. They had to be caps. "No, you're eighteen. Maybe not a day past, but you're definitely eighteen."

It was true, she was. A conga line had started and the two of them were pushed out of the way by the snaking mass of arms and legs. The distraction gave her some much needed time. She downed the rest of her drink and scooted into the corner by the speakers.

"Since you're not denying your age or crying predator, I assume we can continue this conversation," he drawled loudly as he blocked her in. The bass boomed in her ears and she tapped her foot.

"Maybe I am. So that makes you what—some mind reader?" She had to yell. "Because I hope you didn't just admit you're some Facebook stalker."

"Hardly. I don't even know your name, your last name at least."

"Well, I'm not telling you. I'm not in the habit of giving my name to strange men."

"Too bad. But are you still in the habit of throwing dog show trophies?" He raised his eye brows. A dimple flickered in his tan cheek. Scarlett swore and her blood seeped out of her face. Now she remembered him. How could she have forgotten!

"You! You're, you're him! You overheard me—"

He placed a finger over her mouth. She tasted the salt of his skin on her tongue. His lips hovered right alongside her cheek. The shiver of his words shot pleasantly into her ear. And what cologne was that! If she ever found out she'd pour it all over her bed just to roll around in it.

"I realize you're drunk and we're very close to the dj but I doubt you want to scream about your, er, relationship with a person whose fiancée is somewhere in this very room."

He pulled back. His finger skidded down her lips and his eyes gleamed.

"Now, maybe we can have a real conversation. I'm Rhett Butler and you are…"

He smirked, the question dangling from his thick voice like an insinuation. Okay so maybe he wasn't as old as George Clooney. He was somewhere in between Jon Hamm and Henry Cavill. And just as hot as that love child would be.

"Scarlett," she cleared her throat. Her head started to pound. "Scarlett O'Hara."

"Nice to meet you—officially that is."

"Yeah, sure," she said distractedly.

She had just spotted Melanie. Perfect, prim Melanie. Of course. She was actually passing out the pamphlets about the blue-feathered crane or whatever tropical bird they were supposed to be saving tonight. Scarlett looked back at Hamvil (her new name for him, she had a knack for nicknames). Maybe he was just the guy she'd been looking for. She wanted Ashley to bleed with jealousy at his wedding next week. She smiled a dazzling grin and twirled her hair.

"So, will your back go out if you dance or can you show me how to do the hustle?"

He flipped his head back and howled, before grabbing her arm and yanking her to the dance floor. To her surprise, his hips started rocking with all the right angles and his hands slid rhythmically up and down her back. She gasped when his thumb slipped down a little too far and then slowly dragged right back up her spine.

She looked up at him. She hadn't realized how big he was. He had to be a foot taller than she was and he was ripped. His muscles shifted and rolled under her hands. Hard and defined. Scarlett ducked her head when she noticed him twisting a half-smile at her. Had her gutter-mind been so obvious?

"I have no idea what you're planning," he breathed into her hair, pressing her near and swaying to the beat. "But, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Christmas Furlough/Early War Period**

* * *

_Question: Who was the first mean girl? Answer: Scarlett O'Hara._

"Of course, I remember you Mr. Butler—"

"Please, call me Rhett. You say Mr. Butler and I turn around for my father."

Melanie laughed at the lame joke. All bells and chimes. Scarlett's own laugh sounded more like a cough. Rhett gave her a questioning look. She ignored it, turning a plastic smile back on the bride. As much as she would die before admitting it, even she thought Melanie looked pretty today. For starters, the crusader for soft-shelled crabs and one-winged pigeons was actually wearing make-up. That had to be a first. And her vintage-cut, Vera Wang wedding dress hung perfectly on her willowy, flat-chested frame. Scarlett's green eyes narrowed. Her mouth salivated. Did those earrings belong to the effing Queen of England? How good would she look with those suckers hanging off her ears? Emeralds!

Rhett elbowed her and she plastered a false grin back on her face. Melanie and he were talking about some country she was fairly certain had nothing to do with the Hanes-wearing basketball player. She kept her mouth shut. The only thing she knew about current events was whatever the celebs she followed on Twitter tweeted. And somehow she didn't think these two cared that the Kardashians' great-greats had been Armenian. Was Armenia even a country in the Middle East?

Just then, the groom wriggled into their small circle, snaking his arm around his new wife and holding a champagne flute in his other hand. His glossy grey-eyes flicked up and down Scarlett. She couldn't stop the smug smirk from curling around her lips. Her dress was a knock-out red gown with a plunging neckline, barely a back and hip-high slits. She'd gone in completely the other direction when it came to the sacred wedding code of never one-upping the bride.

"I was beginning to think you'd run out on us all, Ashley," she cooed, petting Rhett's arm.

"Scarlett," he nodded, without making eye contact and then shrugged his head at Rhett. "Good to meet you again, Butler."

"Wilkes." Rhett casually brushed his finger against Scarlett's collarbone as he unhitched her grip and laced his fingers around her hand. "Congratulations on your wedding. You're a lucky man."

Melanie's honeyed drawl broke through Ashley's slow-coming answer.

"Thank you very much for coming, but Scarlett's the lucky one. You know, Ashley, this man here single-handedly saved the local marshlands with his donation."

Rhett actually looked a little sheepish at her genuine praise. Ashley mumbled some stupid, cellophane-wrapped reply. He sipped his champagne, sneaking a peek at Scarlett over the rim. She played with the gold chain around her neck, sliding the pendant back and forth. His eyes lingered and slipped down. Her face glowed with satisfaction and she purposefully pushed her boobs together. He nearly choked on his champagne, clearing his throat.

Neither noticed Rhett's frown.

"What line of business are you in Butler? I know you've had some deals with my father but…"

"Oh, mainly exporting and importing. I own a few shipping lines."

"Rhett built his company from the ground up. A real rag to riches story." Scarlett vapidly smiled up at her date. For centuries not a single Wilkes had earned less than a master's degree from Yale. But she knew their ancient piggy bank was threatening to finally go belly up. Scarlett had no idea about politics but she'd always been a whiz at numbers and money markets. "Melanie did I tell you that Rhett dropped out of college and still made it on the Fortune 500 list? It's so—impressive."

She caressed the word with a sigh and beamed at Ashley. Take that Mr.-Gag-Me-With-A-Silver-Ivy-League-Spoon. He barely managed a curt reply. Victory was in her grasp. She could taste his envy like pop rocks on her tongue. And then Rhett opened his big mouth and ruined her ticker-tape moment.

"Dropped out? More like I was kicked out and given a restraining order for sucker punching the Dean of Students. But I guess I can't blame him. Husbands are so touchy about other men sleeping with their wives."

Melanie flushed crimson, Rhett smiled blandly and Scarlett's gloating expression flat-lined—especially when Ashley spewed champagne spittle all over her dress, gagging on his laughter. Rage punctured her vanity.

"Ashley! This can't be dry cleaned tonight!"

"Sorry!" he chortled, swiping a napkin from a nearby server and threatening to dab her splattered dress with it, his hand angling right toward her chest.

"Permit me?" Rhett quietly offered, swooping in with his own handkerchief—who still carried their own handkerchief? She'd thought it had been for show. He pressed the cloth a little too firmly into her shoulder strap.

"I hope the dress isn't ruined," he whispered. "It was doing wonders for you. It almost made you look beautiful instead of desperate."

She glared and pushed him away.

"It'll be fine if you don't rub a hole through it."

"Shipping, how interesting," said Melanie, grasping for straws of normalcy. "Ashley works at the State Department. Isn't that right? He's, he's just come back from a trip to Myanmar—I mean Burma. Funny thing, a country having two names."

For the first time, Rhett looked at Ashley with interest instead of indifference.

"State department? Really? I didn't peg you for a company man."

"Oh, I'm not," Ashley's face suddenly calmed into its usual aloofness. "Just a desk jockey. Nothing more than a gopher, even. I think the mail guys outrank me."

"Ah, well, gophers have their uses."

The two men stared at each other. Scarlett's eyes pinged back and forth. Okay. What was with the gorilla-size-me-up fest all of a sudden? Absently she padded at her speckled dress with her fingers. Dilcey was going to kill her if she couldn't get these stains out! She'd only lent her the dress after some serious groveling and promises that she could wear Scarlett's Jimmy Choos any time.

The tune of "Call Me Maybe" broke up the testosterone stare-down and Rhett popped his iPhone out of his suit pocket.

"Really? Carly Rae Jepson?" Scarlett asked, eye brows up.

"What can I say? It's catchy," he winked and checked the number.

"Sorry. I have to take this one. Business never sleeps. Again, it's been a real pleasure Melanie. Congratulations."

A smile flitted over his stubbly mouth. He squeezed Scarlett's arm in a careless, affectionate way as he drove a path through the wedding guests. His voice was drowned out by the chatter and music. She could barely glimpse his raven hair bobbing above the crowd. For the first time tonight she wondered if he was finally going to kiss her. This would be their third date, if you counted Aunt Pitty's fundraiser last week and so far he'd been the perfect gentleman. Too perfect. She'd started to wonder if he was even interested in her like that. She knew he wasn't gay. No gay guy fondled your breasts with their eyes like his had at least ten times tonight. She dragged her gaze back to the blissful wedding couple. Ashley started talking to his dad, who had come up behind him, and turned away, but not before giving her a "we need to talk" look that she knew she wouldn't say no to.

"So, Scarlett, I think Charles was more upset about not getting to see you than missing my wedding." Melanie smiled knowingly. "But you can't exactly tell a mountain not to explode when you're a geologist."

Charles. Great. That guy couldn't take a hint. He couldn't even take an "unfriending" or an all caps text rejection. He was a mistake. A drunk, rebound hook-up that wouldn't go away. Of course for a few horrifying days she thought he had become a much bigger mistake. A much, much bigger mistake. Thankfully he had remained only a lingering one-night slip in judgment instead of an eternal damnation sort of error. That was the last time she ever let a guy use a condom that she was sure hadn't been taken out of his wallet since his 7th grade Sex-Ed class. Mortifying. Talk about a walk of shame.

"Uh, so Charles is still playing with rocks?" she asked, watching Ashley quickly scoot around some frumpy divorcees and jerk his head at her. Melanie's explanation of what Charles actually did droned meaninglessly in her ears. It would have even if she had been focusing.

"Sorry, Melly, but I really want to see if I can't clean up this dress a little bit more." Knowing she was sneaking off with the Armani-suited Ashley showered her with a burst of kindness. "You look gorgeous, you know. Seriously. I'm jealous."

She hugged the pink-cheeked bride, a one-armed awkward pat on the back, and skipped and skidded her way through the chaos. Scarlett made a wide berth around her rip-roaringly wasted dad. Did he have to talk about his idiot tea party cronies everywhere? Narrowly escaped the clutches of Aunt Pitty and her "friend" Uncle Peter. No way was she about to watch them make googley eyes at each other. Dodged a bullet when her mom, Mammy and Dilcey were sidetracked from claiming her at their table by Suellen and her gaggle. No comment needed there. Finally she slinked out the side doors. Ashley lounged against a brick wall, flicking his cigarette butt at the dumpster.

"I thought you gave that up."

"I did." He flung the cigarette into an oily puddle. It flared then fizzled. "Don't tell Melanie, please. I thought it'd take you longer to come out here."

He ran his hand through his hair. It was longer than when she had last seen him, and streaks of white blasted through the gold. OMG! Why couldn't she get over him?

"What's up?"

He blew out his breath, rubbing his chin and jamming his fists into his pants. His eyes locked with hers. Somber and serious.

"Look I know it's none of my business but why are you going out with Butler?"

Ding! Ding! Ding! Maybe the night wasn't a total bust! Ashley was jealous! The celebration train was coming down the tracks. Break out the confetti.

"Oh, he's only a fling," she shrugged. "It's just so nice to be with a man, instead of a boy."

"He could be your father you know."

"Like you said, it's none of your business."

The lone streetlamp buzzed. Ashley bit his cheek and twisted his mouth. His nostrils flared.

"Do you know he's being investigated by the United States government?"

The train slowed. The whistle sounded less like a happy hoot and more like a warning bell.

"Isn't everyone? I mean, they bug our phones and tap our lines. I'm probably under investigation for throwing away my stars and stripes bikini."

She was just parroting what her dad was always going on about—apart from the bikini bit. She didn't actually have a clue what she was saying or what Ashley was saying either. But she was mad and she sensed another defeat. A real one this time. Ashley shook his head, restraining from rolling his eyes.

"And how do you know about Rhett anyways? You work for the better boyfriend bureau?"

"Scarlett, you just have to trust me."

"Yeah, well, sorry I don't."

He flung his hands out and dragged his fingers through his hair. In two steps he was right in front of her.

"Scarlett, I'm sorry. I really am, but you know…Melanie and me." He swayed like he was going to kiss her and then quickly leaned back. "You know my father's had to take loans out, borrowing money even from friends. From your father. Melanie and my marriage...you're good at economics, much better than I ever will be. You do the math."

Now she was disgusted. Was he telling her what she thought he was saying?

"So what? You married Melanie for her family's money? Is this a merger or a marriage?"

Ashley's face paled but he replied, "Both."

"Great, I didn't realize we were in Victorian England."

Ashley's glower furrowed into confusion.

"Victorian England?"

"Yeah, marrying to bulk up the family coffers. I get it. It's an old story."

He raised his eye brows.

"I can read you, know."

He didn't blink.

"I don't only watch reality TV."

Not an eye flutter.

"Okay, Careen gives me a mani-pedi if I watch Downtown Abbey—"

"Down-_ton_."

"What?"

"It doesn't matter."

He bit his cheeks, this time trying to divert his laughter not his anger, and shifted his feet. She hated when he acted smarter than she was. So what if she'd nearly failed her English SAT's. She'd scored almost an 800 on the Math section. His mouth still twitched. If she hated him acting all superior to her, she _really_ hated him laughing at her. Or anyone for that matter. Fine! Two could play at this game. She would hit him where it hurt the most. With honesty.

"Do you love me?"

The grin disappeared.

"No bull either Ashley."

"Scarlett." His voice rocked with another warning.

"Do you love her?"

"By her, I assume you mean my wife?"

She folded her arms and pushed out her lips. No way was he going to sidestep this with his slippery, holier-than-thou attitude. Not this time.

"Why? Is there someone else I should know about?"

He had the good sense to ignore her, but his eyes flashed with flint.

"Scarlett, Melanie is…she's the best person I'll ever meet. Do you know she wanted to donate all of our wedding gifts to local charities? She would have, too, if India and Honey hadn't stopped her. Do you know that right now the back kitchen of this place is full of homeless people from the nearest soup kitchen? Eating lobster and steak? I mean, if I _didn't _love her I'd be the biggest prick on the planet. Who doesn't love her? She's the single-most authentically selfless person I've ever known. Will ever know."

Scarlett started breathing again. He hadn't really answered the question with a straight yes or no. And sucking in the misty night air she held back the retort that in her books he already was the biggest prick on the planet. The best-looking, most unattainable prick, too. He spun away on his heel and kicked a crushed coke can under the dumpster.

"It kills me not being able to tell her what I really do. But she would be worried sick if she knew."

That threw Scarlett for a loop. Where was this conversation going? What he really did? He was hard enough to understand when he blabbed on and on about authors that sounded like snowboarding tricks—the Foucault spin and the Kierkegaard half. What was he talking about now?

"What you _do?_ You work at a desk downton—I mean downtown Ashley."

His back was still to her, his shoulders slumped.

"Scarlett, I know I've been a jerk to you, but I have a huge favor to ask."

He had to go and use that voice. That vulnerable, sugary voice that had hooked her every time into coming over for late night "chats." The promise rushed out of her mouth before she could stop it.

"Anything, Ashley. You know that."

His shoulders sagged lower and he turned around to face her.

"I can't tell you what I do, but it's more complicated than just filing papers. Take it or leave it because that's all the explanation I can give you."

Weird. He was definitely acting weird but he was actually confiding in her! Telling her secrets he wouldn't even tell Melanie. Why did she have it so bad? It was sick. It wasn't right. Still she nodded and pressed her lips together.

He blew out his breath. She had a terrible, sinking feeling. This wasn't going to be good.

"Promise me that when I go out of town you'll check in on Mel."

Yup. Victory train just crashed and burned. Big time.

"Sure. I'll send her my favorite recipes off of Pintrest. Not that she'll eat them, without switching all the ground beef to soy patties."

Ashley straightened up and looked at her. Really looked at her. The lights in her head were flashing: Retreat! Retreat! But she just stood there, watching him walk up to her. Letting him place his hand on her shoulder and toy with her hair. Wearing that lazy, surfer smile.

"I'm serious. You know her. She's so naïve. It took me four days and a Newsweek article to convince her that the Nigerian princesses were fine and it was just a scam. She loves you like a sister."

Dagger in and twist.

"You know you're the defacto maid of honor."

Rinse and repeat.

"Promise me?"

"Of course."

His eyes turned sad and cloudy. He trailed his gaze along her jaw line, down her neck and over her chest. A sigh escaped and hit her face with heat and desire.

"Sorry about the dress."

"It'll be fine. It's Dilcey's."

His thumb stroked the top of her neckline and his eyes followed.

"You look gorgeous, Scarlett. You're my girl Friday dressed as Gilda."

She had no clue what he was talking about—again. But she was quick enough to know it was good…and bad. He smelled of salt and sand and something minty. He licked his lips. She licked hers.

"Kiss me."

And he did.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Mistress Porch Scene, Sort Of**

* * *

_Question: What happens to a woman with a "deep vein of passionate feeling" and a man with a "bad reputation who has a way with women" post-sexual revolution? Answer: It's Complicated. (which is a GREAT modern fic, much better than my drabble)._

"So this is your place?"

Rhett flicked the lights on.

"This is my place."

Scarlett's eyes drifted from the minimalist décor of the living room to the bare-bones functionality of the kitchen. Black leather, sharp angles and steel sheen glared back at her from every corner. No art on the walls, hardly any color and a heavy absence of personal touch.

"How long have you lived here?"

Rhett shut the door and threw his keys and phone on a spare credenza.

"Too long and not long enough," he chuckled, scooting past her and opening the fridge. Unsurprisingly it was almost empty. He grabbed a Heineken and unscrewed the cap, taking a loud swig.

"Why, Rhett, I'd love a beer."

He flicked his eyes to her and smiled in his toothy, impish way.

"Did I miss a birthday?"

A taunt. Of course.

"I would hate to think I forgot to get you a present for the big 2-1, Scar."

Scar. He knew how much that nickname bothered her. She bit back the retort. She did not want to fight with him. Not again. Their last 'date,' if you could call it that, they'd driven up to Stone Mountain. He'd said things, without actually saying anything and she'd stonewalled, somehow telling him everything. It had ended with her jumping out of his Lamborghini and hitching a ride with a tour bus. That had been a couple months ago. She hadn't heard from him since—not even a shout out on her wall—and she knew it wasn't because she'd screamed at him that day, frightening some Civil War re-enactors, that their on again, off again "friendship" was indefinitely off. He always ignored those sorts of things—things like respect and personal space. But today when she got his one-worded text, "Dinner?" she barely managed to wait the necessary five minutes before responding in the affirmative. She wouldn't admit it to herself, but she'd missed him.

Long ago she'd given up trying to figure out what the status of their relationship was. When he was in town, he would take her out a couple nights a week, their activities ranging from a posh box at a Falcons game to front row seats at a Fray concert. Sometimes he would just show up on her porch, toting take-out Chinese and a pile of horror movies. He didn't seem to enjoy them but he enjoyed laughing at how freaked out she got by them. He'd hold her hand when they were out walking together, rub her back when sitting down, let her fall asleep on his shoulder when they stayed up too late watching Blu-rays, but not once had he kissed her—and she didn't count the lip bumps to the cheek he would sometimes give her. Her dad thought he was too old for her, her friends called him her Sugar Daddy, and her mom knew nothing about him. As for Scarlett, she would have selected "all of the above." On paper he seemed like the world's best guy bud: cool, rich, dressed better than she did and shopped better too, knew all the hot spots in town and somehow finessed his way into every backstage, no-access, VP zone out there. The only problem was—

"My mother always told me it was impolite to stare at people, Scarlett." He stood watching her, a smirk smeared all over his perfect, two-day stubbled face. His bottle left empty on the countertop. "But, let me know if you want to see me from a different angle. I have been told my right side is more photogenic."

—his entire personality! Rude, cutting, sarcastic and cruel. Rhett would badger her with his "superior knowledge," attack her with his "wealth of experience," and knock her down with his "rapier wit." Every compliment was backhanded. Every nice word was coupled with a criticism. He laughed at what he called her endearing peccadilloes. He mocked her sense of style. He teased her until she actually felt empathy for the girls she'd bullied in high school. Relentless with his barbs until one of them finally punctured deep enough to make her explode. Maybe that was why he'd never tried pushing the bounds of their physical relationship; he could get his rocks off making a fool of her. Why complicate things?

He made a mock-Madonna retro pose and she rolled her eyes.

"You're really not going to give me a beer?"

"I cannot condone the dispensing of alcohol to minors."

"I'm twenty. I'd be way legal in Ireland."

"Where'd you hear that? Surely you haven't been reading."

"My dad is Irish. You've heard him talk."

"Ah yes, I've also heard him say that "they" send secret helicopters into the sky to spy on us and that the Braves are better_ since_ Maddux retired."

He raised one of his tweezed eye brows. Scarlett clenched her fists. Don't take the bait. Don't do it.

"Fine. Can I have a Coke?"

"It won't be diet."

"You think I need to lose a few pounds?"

"I will not answer that," he swung open the fridge and tossed her a can. She caught it. Barely. "But I know you think you need to."

"Actually, I don't."

Unlike most twenty-something ladies, she liked her figure. She knew she had a rocking body and didn't pretend to believe otherwise. What was the point? Girls hated her, had always hated her, whether she acted like she wanted a butt-lift or not.

For a moment she thought Rhett looked impressed—and something else. His dark eyes did this sort of fade-in, fade out thing. A rare, genuine smile split across his face. Suddenly she became aware that she was in his apartment and could see his bedroom door. And his king-sized bed. Her mind darted around for a topic. Any topic.

"So really what's with your No Alcohol policy? You haven't cared before."

"Maybe I want you completely lucid," his eyes scanned her body and her heart started somersaulting. Whoa! She did not like him—not like that. Right? "Or maybe I am too cheap to call a cab and hope you can drive my car home tonight."

She snorted. Cheap was not in his vocabulary. For all his faults, he was generous. He forked out the money like every day was payday. For her last birthday he'd actually bought her this crazy Philip Treacy hat and flown her in a private jet to the Kentucky Derby. Just so she'd have a place to wear it.

She snorted again, finally popping open her can. Bam. The liquid volcanoed up, blasting into her face and drenching her shirt. It shot into her nostrils and drizzled down her neckline, snaking sickly around her cleavage.

"You had to throw it!" she yelled, flicking at her eyes and tasting cola bubbles on her lips. "You had to throw it."

Scarlett doubted Rhett had heard her over his barking, choking laughter. She grumbled and tossed the empty can at his head. He dodged out of the way, cradling his sides.

"Where's your bathroom?"

"Feel free to use whatever," he wheezed, wiping away the tears and pointing through his bedroom door. "Towels are underneath the sink."

She whipped around, her sopping hair slapping her in the face and marched to the bathroom. She struggled with the door, unable to catch the latch with her sticky fingers. Suddenly Rhett appeared in front of her and obligingly slammed it for her.

The bathroom had the same five star-hotel feel to it. Cold, unfriendly and beautiful. She stripped off her shirt and bra, wringing them into the sink. Glancing up, she started at her wet, feral reflection and decided to just go ahead and take a shower.

The hot water struck her with a million, massage needles. She luxuriated under it. Aunt Pitty's shower heads were terrible and she'd been staying there since school got out for summer break. She wanted to just stand in Rhett's shower forever but when she reached for a body wash and found herself staring at a pink, flowery bottle, some of the ease washed away. How often did Rhett bring women up here? Jealousy nudged at her gut but she pushed it out. Why would she be jealous? She didn't love Rhett, she loved…she'd promised not to think about him.

How many months had he been gone? No word. No news. Only the strange information Rhett, Rhett of all people, had managed to learn from his contacts at Langley. Ashley Wilkes was in an enemy prison. Which enemy? Which country? No one would say. Not the CIA. It had nearly put Melanie into hysterics when Rhett told her Ashley was not State. Scarlett was not so surprised.

Most people thought Ashley had died. Most people had written him off. But not his wife. Melanie turned all of her energies on finding and liberating her husband. No more campaigns for whales or wastrels. Every day, every hour practically she was publicizing his imprisonment, petitioning for more information or simply praying. She refused to have a memorial or any sort of vigil. Scarlett had to give her props for her diligence. She wished she could share her optimism. Instead she punished herself by moving in with her number one frenemy and sharing her house.

The move had accomplished two things: it got her out of summer chores back at home and ensured she'd keep her promise to Ashley. Melanie had been begging her to move in ever since Ashley had disappeared. Finally two months ago she'd agreed. She was a glutton for pain. Because not only must she endure Melanie's and Aunt Pitty's, who lived upstairs in her own apartment with her cats, girly shows and excess of estrogen tear parties, but the evidence of Ashley and Melanie's baby. Yup. Melly was pregnant and just about ready to pop. Repeating "Rent-free, meals-free, parent-free" no longer did much to boost her spirits.

The water grew cold and she slammed the faucet off. No she would not think about it. Not tonight. What better distraction than Rhett? He never talked about serious things and he'd kept his stupid mouth shut about Ashley so far tonight. He apparently didn't want to start a fight again either. No serious stuff. Especially not since her dad had called just before Rhett picked her up and in one breath assured her not to worry and commanded her to light a votive candle because her mother had to get a biopsy on her ovaries next week. Nope. Just breathe. Think about what a male-whore Rhett must be to keep women's bath gels in his shower. Think about how to get him back for shaking up the Coke. Think about anything but real life.

Scarlett stepped out of the shower, steam all around her, and snagged a towel from below. She spotted some Lovespell lotion from Vicki's and an unopened Secret deodorant also in the cupboard. Seriously. He was going to get an earful. Still she snatched them and used them, easily hunted down a brand-new tooth brush and combed through her hair with her fingers. She frowned at her stained, wet shirt and bra. Something would have to be done about those. She didn't need to find out if he had a stash of clean Vicki's underwear.

Flipping around to her jeans and panties she groaned. They were floating in a sudsy puddle. Inadvertently she'd used them as a bath mat. No use crying over wet underwear. She would borrow some sweats and go commando. At least she'd shaved. Yesterday. Securing the towel under her arms and over her knees, she snuck back out into the living room. Rhett watched Sportscenter, lounging on his couch and with his back to her. She blew out her breath. Nervous.

"Hey, Rhett, do you mind if I borrow sweats or something? My top can't be saved without throwing it in the wash. And I sort of accidentally already washed my pants."

Click. The screen went blank. He tossed the remote and turned around. A flash of surprise crossed his face and then an energy she couldn't name. It was dark and light all at the same time. His eyes moved over her, tugging down the towel and winding around her legs. She bit her lip, feeling self-conscious. Her cheeks flushed. Why did she feel like a middle-schooler at her first dance? Rhett had seen her in much less clothing. They'd gone water-skiing together last summer and her swimsuit top had nearly flown off.

"Or a t-shirt even and some basketball shorts. Your a.c.'s not up that high, not like the meat locker temperatures Aunt Pitty keeps at home." Great she was rambling. Next she'd be discussing the weather.

"You can wear, or not wear, anything you like," he said, standing up and shoving his hands into his pockets. He grinned and started walking toward her. Swaggering more like.

His tare-your-clothes-off stare zapped through her skin and straight into her heart. Blood pounded from her toes to her crown and sweat gathered on her face. He knew what he was doing. She thought of the women's body wash and bath products, of how much more experience he must really have and how few and far between her sexual encounters had been by comparison. Did she even want to do this? Would it ruin what they had? Whatever that was. Was she ready to jump from hand-holding directly into his 1,200-thread count sheets? Slow down!

He was right in front of her, sporting an arrogant, heated smirk.

"Is Melanie or Aunt Pitty waiting up for you?" He brushed a wet lock of hair away from her forehead. Fire and ice jolted through her. "Will they worry if you're not back for breakfast?"

Yeah, he definitely knew what he was doing. She needed to take control of the situation. Only a towel and her resolve stood in between her and him.

"Do these lines work at the Geriatric hang outs?"

"I've been told I have a way with women. Of all ages."

"Emphasis on all."

"Oh, not all." He laughed softly. His voice melted like chocolate, syrupy and thick. "Not yet."

He breathed over her, the tip of his nose grazing the side of her face. Stop trembling! Stop blushing! Her body wasn't listening, only reacting. "The lotion smells much better on you, Scarlett."

There went one of her weapons. He pulled back. Not even an ounce of shame. His eyes wouldn't quit dancing with that x-ray vision, bad-boy vibe. Maybe she could still turn it around. She widened her eyes.

"Rhett, I…I'm scared."

Something shifted in his face. It softened.

"Why, babe?"

Babe. Only Rhett could make terms of endearment not sound cheesy. She struggled not to show too much. He could read her mind like an open blog.

"I don't want…"

"I promise we'll still be friends."

"A VD."

His face shut down. Blank.

_She _smirked this time. Oh! It felt good to finally wipe that smug playboy sneer off his face. If she could have this much power with some verbal foreplay, imagine what she could do with some physical cat and mouse. Sleeping with Rhett might just be her ticket to wreak her vengeance on him and get even.

Her bright gaze flickered down his body. He wore casual white slacks. His blue button-up was rolled to the elbows, the collar loose and limp. She was struck by his size. The muscles in his arms and shoulders rubbed against the thin cotton. His pants clung to his hulking thighs. She sucked hard on her bottom lip. Payback would be sweet—and spicy.

"Scarlett?"

She pulled her eyes away, blinking and refocusing on his face. He smiled down at her, rubbing the back of his neck. His eyes were darker than usual.

"Believe me, if I choose to do this tonight, you won't be scheming for revenge. You'll be plotting how to get back into my bed."

And reverse. How did he get back in the driver's seat? The letdown was too much for her. Agitated—in every possible way—she couldn't keep her temper in check.

"If _you_ choose to do this tonight? If _you _choose!"

"Why else would I bring you back here? For the first time in two years?"

He looked at ease. So in-control. It only made her angrier.

"I hate to break it to you but unless you're planning on going AWOL and slipping me a rufie, you're not touching me. Not tonight! Not ever!"

She shoved at him. Forgetting she was in a towel. Forgetting it wasn't very secure. It plopped down onto her feet. The cold blasted on her bare breasts and naked torso. She stumbled back, trying to cover up. Her hands clumsily waved up and down her body, managing to hide nothing.

Rhett just stood there. Quiet and subdued. The tiniest flush on his olive face. He slowly bent down and picked up the towel. His eyes didn't break away from her once. She ended her awkward nude dance with her knees crossed, one arm slung across her breasts and the other hovering straight down. Big time Jazz hands.

"It's impolite to stare," she lamely yelled.

"I think we're beyond politeness," Rhett drawled, walking up and draping the towel around her. His midnight eyes caressed her face and she leaned in, drawn by the mesmerizing, black holes. Afraid and weirdly awed. He turned the corner of his mouth down. A lonely sadness briefly covered his face.

"Come on, Scarlett. Let's get you some sweats."

He brushed past her and she shook her head, to snap out of it. Suddenly confused. She trailed him into the bedroom, hugging the towel tightly. Had he only been joking? No, she knew when a guy wanted her and Rhett had definitely wanted her. Then why did she feel rejected?

Grey sweats hit her face and she spun around to him. He was unbuttoning his shirt, rummaging around in his closet. Every piece of clothing folded and pressed. Guys shouldn't be as neat as him. It was unnatural. This entire night had been unnatural.

"Rhett?"

"Hmm?" he had shrugged out of his shirt and was putting on a purple and orange Clemson Tigers tee. She couldn't help but gawk at how cut his abs were. He yanked his head through the neck hole and brushed back his black hair. He faced her and grinned. Sometimes, like now, Rhett could just be so…nice. So easy-going and relaxed. Such an escape. Why couldn't he always be this way? Why did he have to switch on the anti-charm and act like an overgrown punk?

"Would you rather have a t-shirt and shorts?"

"What?"

He pointed to the sweats on the floor. She lowered her head and just stared at them. Who was he really? He never talked about himself. Never. She'd had to learn about his past from Google searches or slip-ups when he was drunk. And tonight? What had happened to conceited Mr. Wonderful? Did he think he was too good for her? Did he think she was too…too inexperienced? Too young? Again the wheels started spinning. If you've got it, flaunt it. If she wanted the ultimate upper hand with him it would require aggression. Especially after the free peep show she'd given him. She didn't know if it was so much about wanting to be with Rhett as about wanting to be wanted by him. But she wasn't like most girls who overanalyzed everything and gabbed with her bffs over coffee on what each word meant in a five sentence conversation with a guy. Evasions were not her style. Action was.

"I am an adult you know, Rhett."

He was heading into the bathroom with a pair of warm-ups and stopped short. He lifted his eye brows.

"Maybe I can't drink a beer in public but I am an adult."

"What do you want, Scarlett?" He sounded tired and leaned against the bathroom door frame.

She wasn't sure why she was doing this. But she knew if she didn't do it now, she never would. Gosh! Why hadn't he let her have just one swallow of his beer? Her mind flew over all of her worries, all of the reasons she should turn away and all of the consequences this might bring. Still she was determined. She marched over to his bed and her jaw jutting out she looked straight at him.

"Sex."

This time she meant to drop the towel onto the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Rough 'n Ready/Atlanta Escape/Mistress Porch Scene**

* * *

_WARNING: Some mature content. I went back and forth. Nothing is explicit but it is VERY implicitly graphic. At least in my mind. _

_Question: What becomes of the broken-hearted? Answer: They search everywhere for someone to care. (OR) Question: 1+1+1+.5 Answer: 2 _

"I'm sorry," she swiped at the tears dripping from her nose. "It's just I didn't know where else to go."

"You don't need to apologize for coming, Scarlett. I'm glad I was home."

She sniffled and turned her blood shot eyes on him. A thousand different thoughts hit her. They might as well have been rain on glass.

"My mother's dead, Rhett."

He didn't apologize. He didn't cry. He didn't try to come up with useless words, cheap greeting card phrases or empty promises. He just sighed, pulling her in by the back of her neck and cradling her head to his chest.

"I know."

For a long time she sobbed. For a long time he listened.

"I…I just can't believe she's gone. A month! A month! The doctors—they told us we'd have a year, maybe longer. They lied. She lied. Everybody lied."

She felt something touch her forehead. Was it his lips? It didn't matter.

"I was going to go home. I was going to drive there last night, but Melly…It was terrible. She screamed for so long." Her tear-soaked eyes shot up to his face. His calm mask saved her. "How can anyone endure that kind of pain? It's…it's the twenty-first century and she nearly died, Rhett! The stupid doctors and nurses didn't force her to have an epidural. And when it was too late, after she'd pushed for hours—they had to cut her open anyways."

The gruesome images of the birth flashed in her mind; a real-life horror show. Blood and bodies and knives. The tiny alien-looking baby being ripped from the womb. Melanie passed out with delirium and narcotics as the doctors barely succeeded in saving her child. Where was the miracle? It had been brutal and disgusting. Terrifying.

"I never want kids. Ever."

"How is Melanie?"

It was the first time he'd spoken in Scarlett didn't know how much time. They were sitting in his apartment on the couch. Suddenly she felt awkward and out-of-place. She scooted away from him and rubbed the flat of her hand across her wet cheeks. The tears had stopped. Could she ever cry again?

"Melly's," her gaze floated over the furniture. It looked just as untouched and unloved as the last time she'd been here. The only other time she'd been here. "Melly's Melly. She's probably singing to her baby and half the maternity ward, knowing her. She's fine. It doesn't…"

She bit her lip and stopped from saying more. But Rhett never let half-finished phrases go unsaid.

"Doesn't?"

What did it matter? Stupid things like that didn't matter. Never would matter to her again. So what if Melly was a prude about these things. She'd sacrificed saying goodbye to her mother for Melanie. She didn't owe her a thing.

"It doesn't look like she'll have any milk, I guess. At least that's what the lactation consultant thinks. Mel's pretty disappointed, but the nurses tell her formula's great and she can still bond or whatever with dry nursing, or something. I don't know."

Scarlett shook her head. The whole thing was weird. If she did ever have kids, which she highly doubted, she thought formula sounded fantastic. She didn't want some baby sucking on her nipples like that. From the little she'd seen in the hospital it looked like it hurt like a…well, like a mother. No thanks.

The leather cushion squeaked as Rhett stood up. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and stared down at her. Big crescents darkened the under of his eyes. It looked like he hadn't shaved in a week. For the first time she could ever remember his clothes were a touch wrinkled, fragile creases in his white shirt and charcoal slacks, as though he'd slept in them last night but hadn't changed all day.

"I'm sorry. You're probably busy." She snatched up her purse at her feet and started to stand up. "I should get going anyways. I promised Mammy—"

"Do you want a beer?"

She gave him a look. He nearly smiled.

"Sit down. I'll get some from the fridge."

He was back handing her a cold bottle and chugging down his own before she had resettled into the couch. It wasn't that the process of half-standing to fully sitting required so much time. It was more the fact that her mind had finally excised off enough grief and shock to accept the penetration of the memory that had been trying to break through the surface since she'd stumbled, crying and half-disoriented, to his apartment door tonight. The memory of the most humiliating moment of her life.

_Scarlett wriggled her bare toes into the wooly carpet. Standing. Just standing there. Was he going to answer? Was he going to move? The high of adrenaline was falling fast. She refused to reach down and pick back up the towel. She could not give in to fidgeting. Or to the screeching voice, which sounded eerily like Mammy, telling her to cover herself up and run like the wind to confession. No. She had made a decision. She wouldn't back down from her choice. Or her consequences. Like a good catholic girl she would do as she pleased and suffer the gnawing guilt afterward._

_"So...Rhett?"_

_"Why?"_

_His voice was dead. His face was a blank._

_"Why what?" She asked, suddenly no longer able to stop from moving her arms, from hesitatingly folding them over her hips or around her stomach and finally, awkwardly, crossing them halfway over her boobs._

_He closed his eyes and dropped his head against his hand dangling up on the bathroom door frame. She heard his sigh from across the room. As loud and animalistic as a huff from the nostrils of a gigantic horse. And she would know, she'd done dressage since she was six._

_"Why do you want sex now?" He rolled his face toward her. His eyes glinted. "You didn't two minutes ago when you told me I'd have to drug you—which by the way is really bad form for keeping a guy interested."_

_An emotion worse than embarrassment crept into her blood. Goosebumps stung across her exposed flesh. Things were not going as planned. Not that this had involved much planning. _

_She faked a laugh. A desperate laugh._

_"You're telling me you're not interested?" Fake spunk. Fake snort. She could hardly breathe. "I'm not blind you know. What did you have a pack of Lifesavers in your pocket in the living room?"_

_Wrong thing to say. He shoved off of the door frame. His eyes raked up and down her. Not with desire, but with disgust._

_"I may not be able to control some things but I can control not sleeping with an immature child. Get dressed, Scarlett. I'm taking a shower."_

_He slammed the bathroom door._

_Once when she was nine or ten she'd been in a car crash. A massive delivery truck had barreled into the family van while she and her dad were coming home from soccer practice. Her neck had whipped forward and her legs had snapped up. The seat belt had lashed around her rib cage with sickening strength. The intense pain on her chest had drowned her of oxygen and broken her bones. She felt the same heaviness constrict her lungs now. Bruising, crushing and nauseating._

_Hyperventilating, she dashed to the sweats on the floor and threw them on. She barely remembered to grab her purse on the way out._

"You know, I'm not going to take your beer away and make some crack about your age," Rhett said, forcing her from her terrible thoughts. He sat on the opposite end of the sofa, with a magazine strewn across his lap. How long had she been spacing out? She jerked her head and half-smiled, raising the bottle to her lips.

"Thanks for the beer."

He nodded and turned back to his magazine, licking his thumb to turn the glossy page. She sipped and watched him read for a few minutes. Giving her time to sort out her mind. If that was even possible. It wasn't. She downed her beer and placed it on the coffee table beside his empty bottle.

"What are you reading?" She needed something, anything to break the silence.

He lifted his eyes from the page to her face. It was strange seeing him act so…normal. Not one smirk. Not one taunt. His black eyes shined gentle and smooth, puddles of liquid ink.

"It's called _The Atlantic_."

"It's about the ocean?"

That made sense. She knew Rhett owned a couple of sail boats—and several shipping lines. A tepid grin waved over his lips.

"Not exactly."

"Oh."

She wasn't really interested in knowing more. The grief was returning. Its coldness pricked at the corners of her brain.

"Do you mind if I turn on the TV or something?"

"Do whatever you like." He said it kindly. A flare of something glistened in his pupils. "Do whatever you need to Scarlett. I—"

Her phone buzzed, cutting him off. She looked and saw the screen lit up with the picture of Mammy.

"Sorry," she mumbled reaching into her purse. "I think I'll go out on the balcony."

She was gone for only ten minutes. But when she returned, her world had changed. Again. Her cheeks were ashen and her eyes glassy. A tingling numbness nibbled at her skin. Her feet carried her from the sliding glass doors back to the couch. Every step weighted down with lead. She sat down with a stone stillness.

Rhett—always cool, always collected Rhett—started at her appearance, like he was staring at the zombie version of her. That would be appropriate. She felt like the walking dead. _Their_ lives end but somehow they too go on living.

"Scarlett, what happened?"

She twisted her neck to see him. Each movement slowed in time like she was shifting through plasma. Vaguely she wondered why he looked so worried. What did he care? His life hadn't just been destroyed. His future hadn't just been obliterated into a cloud of uncertainty. Again.

"My…my dad. It's all gone."

The magazine slid off his thighs as he moved over to her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and quickly studied her face.

"Who was that on the phone?"

"Mammy." Her voice cracked. "It was my grandma."

"What did she say?"

His fingers were hurting her, digging into her shoulders. The pain almost felt good. She looked into his hard, intense face and the dam of paralysis came tumbling down.

"My dad is broke, Rhett. Broke."

For the second time tonight she exhaled into his shirt, wracking sobs of shock and anger. Why had her dad put all his money into one investment? Why had he trusted that hedge fund manager? Now what were all the people who worked in their factories going to do to make a living? She'd known her dad had been crazy with worry these past four weeks, hardly coherent and rarely sober. Only fixing himself up for when he went and saw her mother at the cancer treatment center. He should have let Sam Foreman, his broker, take over for him. He should have gone on leave. Instead he'd made a foolish bid, hoping to make a fast return and be able to cash in quick. The result: bankruptcy. And from what Mammy had told her on the phone, her dad—her funny, boyish, bullish father had finally cracked. Pork, the CFO of the company Gerald had started from nothing and turned into a million-dollar network of manufacturing and distribution plants, had just admitted its now penniless CEO to a psych ward.

"Mammy said there's no money for my tuition. Not that I love school but..." Scarlett was only going to Georgia Tech to appease her parents. The plan had always been for her to take over as head of the company. Not now. The only prospect that had excited her. The one thing she was really, really good at: business. Poof gone. Gone as fast as she could say Bernie Madoff. "She said they're foreclosing on our house and we'll lose everything. The five acres. My horses."

She hadn't ridden her horses much since she'd gone off to college two years ago but she still loved them. They were part of her past. Part of her. Relics of the life she had led. The privileged, upper-class life she was suddenly, violently losing.

"Is there anything that will be left after the breakdown?"

The tears only trickled now. She kept her head on his chest. Too tired to move. Too tired to care. He smelled good. He always smelled good. And the sound of his heart beat reassured her. It was steady. It was dependable.

"I don't know. We don't know much yet. Maybe, maybe something. Some company's going to come in and probably rip it all apart. Sell what's available for scrap metal. It's actually the company Frank works for."

"Frank? Frank Kennedy? Of General Store Capital?"

"I guess."

Scarlett only knew him as the old dude who'd sometimes do business with her dad and who had recently started "hanging out" with her nineteen year old sister Suellen. Gross. Rhett might be older but at least he was good-looking. Frank reminded her of Johnny Knoxville, but with a grey beard and strung out on meth. Who cared if he owned a bunch of shopping centers?

"He's an honest guy. He won't gut what he doesn't have to from your dad's remaining assets. He might even be able to keep a plant or two running. Who knows? Production has never been my line of work."

She nodded into his shirt. She didn't want to talk anymore. Her throat throbbed, swollen and scratchy. Like she had Strep. The conversation melted into hushed breathing. The silence wasn't so suffocating now.

Eventually Rhett shifted, leaning against the back sofa cushion and bringing her feet up to hang over his legs. She let him hold her, cradle her really. He rubbed his thumb along her temple, wiping the tear streaks into her hair. She knew she looked like a hot mess. She was in the same tank top and cut-off shorts from two nights ago when Melly had first gone into labor. Her hair hung oily and straggly in a sloppy bun. No make-up. No deodorant. And no way was she going to avail herself of Rhett's booty-call horde again.

He started lightly dragging his fingers across her arm. It tickled, but not in the way to make her laugh. The hollowness in her chest started to burn. Lonely and sad she craved touch and comfort. But she would never risk humiliating herself with Rhett again. She needed to leave. And soon.

"Thanks for letting me ruin your night," she whispered, raising her head and still sitting on his lap. She tucked some loose strands behind her ear. "I think I'm going to go home."

Their faces were only inches apart. His expression could have been one of sadness or boredom. She could never tell with him. He ran his blank gaze over her face.

"Your eyes are incredible," he said and touched the side of her cheek. "They're like emeralds in a sea of snow and fire."

She waited for the punch line but none came. It was the first time he'd given her a real compliment; a gift of praise without cruelty attached. The most random, most beautiful compliment she'd ever heard.

"That was..."

He placed his other hand on her cheek. She knew what he was about to do. And she didn't stop him.

His lips found hers with a feathery touch that quickly transformed into lightning. Soft and electric. He kissed her mouth, her neck, along her collar-bone and under her ear, always returning to her lips. All her grief and all her pain rose with her breath to the fore of her mouth; siphoned away by Rhett's driving tongue and demanding kisses. He had his shirt and her shirt off before she could even question it. He moved and slid half-clad, gliding his hands on her skin and through her hair. It was as though his need to touch her were as strong as her need to forget. To forget the wrenching absence of her mother. To forget the disappearance of her hopes and security. To forget the horrifying birth of Ashley's son. To forget Ashley. Oh she must forget him. Surely he was dead.

"Tell me you want this," Rhett demanded his breath hot on her skin.

"Yes."

In between a sigh and a moan the pants hit the floor and they danced, weaving and grasping their way to his bed. They didn't speak again for a long time. Not with words.

Rhett lie behind her, sweeping the ends of her hair along his fingers. She could see the back and forth motion from the corner of her eye and felt the soft tug at her scalp. He'd been doing this for a while. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but she knew it wasn't this: his relaxed naked body pressed against hers, his quiet, lazy mood. It was like an after-sex scene from a movie, which in her experience was about as far from reality as chicks keeping their hair curled and lips glossed after a robot invasion. It just didn't happen in real life. And neither did this comfortable, completely nude camaraderie.

She'd never really had a serious relationship. Apart from Ashley, she'd never even been friends with a guy before sleeping with them. In junior high and high school she'd made out with a bunch of her old elementary school boy buds—the ones she'd beat in track and soccer—but nothing more than some extended, sloppy kisses and inept petting. Her first had been a boy she'd met at summer camp in Saratoga. He had been hot and dreamy, seventeen and cocky. She'd promised to keep in touch but deleted him from her contacts when he started sexting her dirty photos of himself in the shower. Clearly he didn't have a sister who prowled and parents who'd flip. And anyways, she'd fallen hard for Ashley by that point. Ashley. No way was she going to think about him. Or any of the other messed up things in her life.

Abruptly Scarlett sat up, tugging the top sheet with her. She needed space and she needed a shower. Rhett tensed beside her.

"I just feel so sticky and gross," she couldn't make eye contact with him and so she stared at the tangled sheets. She gathered all of her hair up and away from her neck. The air wafted breeze-like over her sweaty back. "I better…I better go. I promised Mammy I'd come home tonight. And Melly I'd stop by the hospital on my way out."

Silence. And then the sound she'd been hitching her breath to hear. The sound she hated. His light, arrogant laughter. She tensed now. Anxiety won over her embarrassment. Her eyes darted to his face, but she could still see his body. He wasn't doing anything to cover up.

"Why is that funny?"

"Don't you find it funny?"

"What?"

He laughed again and shook his head.

"What?"

Despite her misgivings, she had been enjoying the 'new' Rhett. Or at least the 'lover' Rhett (lover, she couldn't stand that word). Spooning with him she'd been beginning to understand why he had no problems getting ladies up to his bachelor pad. The sex had been great. _He_ had been great. From start to finish, and even after. She wouldn't think about how great though because that would just confuse her. Or worse, make her want to turn this night into more than a one-time thing. And for her sanity it needed to stay in the books as a non-reoccurring hook-up.

He was still laughing his idiot head off. She glared.

"Why are you laughing?"

His reply: scooting out of bed and walking around the room. Letting everything just hang out like it was the Fourth of July at a nudist colony. He didn't have the shame that God gave a goat.

"You're not going to answer me?"

"No."

He was checking his phone and didn't look up. She tried not to look down.

"Why are you ignoring me?" Pestering him helped keep her eyes focused, and her mind occupied. The drowsy pause on real life seemed to be winding up to regular speeds. And she wasn't ready for the vicious thrust. "Earth to Rhett."

He scanned his phone's screen, his face growing darker and darker. She watched the muscles in his jaw clench and forgot about her confused annoyance. About the hurt lurking around the corner, waiting for her. Something was wrong. Just his profile was scaring her. She'd never admit it but he could seriously freak her out. He got this look sometimes that reminded her of mug shots of prisoners on death row. He wore the look now.

"Is something the matter, Rhett?"

He didn't answer her immediately, but the scary hue of his expression instantly transformed. Snap. A light had been switched on or maybe off. Either way, his face was a mask. His expression was mild.

"Just some minor issues at work. What were we talking about?"

Now she was really confused. Rhett never forgot anything. It was really annoying.

"You don't remember?" And then a light went off in _her_ head. Of course. He was just playing dumb so he didn't have to answer the question. "Whatever, Rhett. If you don't want to tell me, it's fine. I'm smart enough to know there's no point in badgering you."

He blinked and pushed his mouth into three-quarters frown and one-quarter smile.

"Oh, right. My laugh. No, I'm not going to tell you. And _want_ has nothing to do with it. I refuse to kick you when you're down, Scarlett. That's all you need know." His softening voice instantly morphed into its usual, pointed drawl. His eyes zoomed over her body. "However I will tell you that for a woman who I have now seen naked on several occasions you are entirely too covered up."

She gulped. He'd just turned smack-dab in front of her. Full Monty style. Could he put on some boxers—a Speedo—a jock strap—something? She liked to ogle a guy at the beach or in a baseball uniform every once in a while but this was ridiculous.

"Yeah, well, maybe one of us should try to keep things normal between friends."

Rhett narrowed his dark eyes and something sparked in them. He tossed his phone on the floor and walked to her side of the bed. Scarlett clutched tighter at the sheets, her eyes widening at his approach.

"I don't want normal with us," he said as he ripped the sheets away. She screamed but he just cocked that errant-eyebrow. "And despite what I said last time you were here, I don't sleep with my friends."

She spluttered and panted. Her mind tripping over his words. Her eyes shooting over his amused flushed face.

"Do you want to shower?"

"Together?"

"Only if you want," he drawled. "But just so you know, I like it hot."

Spinning around—something that did not look entirely comfortable for a pants-less man—he yanked open a drawer and threw a pile of clothes at her. Scarlett peeled a bra off her face, ready to hurl his "courtesy extras" right back at his naked butt, until she realized she was staring at her own lacey, black bra. She flicked her eyes over the clothes—they were all hers. Clean and wrinkle-free. No more soda stains. She'd completely forgotten they were here. Just as she'd completely adopted wearing his grey sweats over the past few weeks.

"Thanks."

She glanced at him. He was finally pulling on some boxer-briefs and mumbled something she guessed was "You're welcome."

She looked back at her clothes and hugged them. Fresh clothes! Her own clothes! And a shower! If need be she could cry some more under the water. She probably would even if she didn't need to. Her brain was on overdrive. Too much had happened in the last forty-eight hours to make sense of any of it. Including the last hour, especially the last five minutes.

Her eyes drifted again to Rhett. Had he meant what he just said? Did he want to be more than friends? Or did he mean they were no longer friends? He didn't want normal for them, but what did abnormal mean? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Sex buddies? Or had he just been making a joke? A way to prank her later? For a moment she considered dragging the sheet along with her to the bathroom, more to spite him than to hide her body. His next words changed her mind, even if he did smirk like a know-it-all and strut out of the bedroom right after.

"And don't worry, I told my little sister Rosemary that you'd used some of her lotion. She told me you owed her a dime. I paid her a quarter."

She scurried across the room with her clothes and hurried into the shower. Maybe this new normal with Rhett wouldn't be so bad. Maybe it was exactly the break she needed after the nightmare day. The nightmare month really. She left the bathroom door unlocked. That was all the invitation she would give him. Could give him. The gesture would prove pointless.

When Scarlett stepped out of the bathroom, clean and, not happy, but refreshed, she discovered two things. One, Rhett was nowhere to be found. And two, his apartment building was on fire. The sprinklers soaked her as she tore open the door and ran down the crowded hallways, clutching the cryptic Post-it note she'd found on her phone: I'm CIA. Get out before the fire starts. Destroy this. Her feet flew down the stairwell and the curses flew out of her mouth.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: End of War Period/Yankee Invasion**

* * *

_Question: What do you get from a spoiled cow? Answer: Sour milk._

"So you didn't notice anything else? A tattoo? His eye color?"

Scarlett looked up at Officer Keaney through her fingers. How many times were they going to ask her these stupid questions? They'd already ransacked her stuff and muddied the floor. She'd even seen one of the CSU chicks steal a bag of chips from the pantry.

"Hey," said another pudgy bully in uniform strolling out of the kitchen, crumbs flying from his mouth and some pastry smashed into his palm. "The techs are done. Not really much to go on. Finish your report and we can make it to the precinct's basketball game."

"Yeah, I'll hurry up. Almost done."

Basketball game? They'd hurry up to go watch a bunch of overweight, middle-aged men drip sweat onto the floor but not because she'd been asking them to leave for the last hour? Furious she dragged her fingers down her face and smacked them on her thighs, rubbing her hands back and forth on her jeans. She scowled at both officers and then she realized what Atlanta's own Chief Wigham was eating—a cupcake. Her sister's cupcake. The hard-earned, one special treat she'd bought for Carreen's eighteenth birthday on the way home from waitressing: a gourmet red-velvet and cheesecake-frosted bit of heaven from Very Merry-wether's Bakery.

"Get out!" she yelled, jumping up and snatching what was left of the cupcake from the stunned officer's hand. "Get out now!"

"Now, ma'am," soothed Officer Keaney, flicking his thumb and silently commanding his five-fingered specialist of a partner to scram. "I am sorry Officer De Streer acted very unprofessional here tonight. He will be disciplined—"

"Disciplined! I don't care about discipline," she shook the mangled treat in his face. "I want my cupcake back! I want my kitchen swept and my carpets cleaned! I want you to take that little note pad of yours and shove it up your—"

"I think what my friend here is saying," cut in Melly's quivering voice, moving away from the window and swinging Beau to her other tiny hip, "is that we have answered all of your questions and there is nothing left to tell you. You know as much as we do now."

Officer Keaney scrutinized her for a moment, but Melanie spread her sweetest, most Shirley Temple smile and he dropped his eyes.

"Well, you have my card, if you remember anything. Good evening, Miss O'Hara. Mrs. Wilkes."

Melly shut the door behind the police and exhaled. Scarlett flung herself down on the couch and glared. The cupcake lay forgotten on the coffee table.

"Remind me to have you lie for me the next time Mammy asks me who ate her stash of chocolate," she said, with a begrudging grin of admiration. Who would've thought Miss Never-Goes-Over-Twenty-Five could pull such a fast one on the police?

Melanie didn't answer but instead silently slid down with her back against the door. Beau clung to her until his feet could touch the ground. He squirmed and broke free, soldier-crawling flat on his belly to a pile of clippings now strewn across his playmat. Neither woman moved to stop him as he destroyed all the couponing Suellen had done—the only useful thing she would do.

"So where did you put it?" Melanie asked after a couple minutes.

"Oh! Geesh!" Scarlett scrambled to the floor and pounced on Beau. He laughed, dribbling a ten percent off Groupon for Lipton's out of his mouth as she dug into his diaper and withdrew the gun.

"I've never understood why you go to all the trouble of using cloth diapers but I'm sure glad today."

"It's better for the planet."

Scarlett looked at the gun and unloaded it.

"It was better for us." She set Beau down and started piling up the coupons. "Well, let's get this mess cleaned up."

It didn't take long to tidy up the bedrooms and living room with the two of them working together. They approached the kitchen last in their cleaning sweep. It reeked of smoke and charred lasagna.

The dinner they had been preparing when the masked burglar had intruded was a definite bust. It might have been saved despite the mid-afternoon home invasion if Melly hadn't knocked the open container of olive oil onto the hot stove burner when she spotted the guy. Of course, the small grease fire had effectively saved them too. It had startled the intruder and given them time. Melanie had blasted the kitchen with the fire extinguisher while Scarlett had grabbed the gun and fired it at the burglar. She missed, hitting a wilting house plant and the masked man had hopped back out through the broken window and down the fire escape.

"Let's splurge and order a pizza," suggested Melanie, scrunching her nose at the acrid scent. "There's a coupon for Maybello's Pizzas I saw Beau sucking on."

"Alright," agreed Scarlett.

She picked up a Brillo pad and began scouring the steel pan with the embers of vegetables and red sauce in it. Melanie shuffled beside her and grabbed one of her own, attempting to unblacken the stovetop. Beau had passed out a few minutes ago and they could hear his gurgling z's from the pack 'n play inside the bedroom as the scratch-swish-scratch crackled in the kitchen.

Everything had happened so fast. And now everything was moving too slowly. The grating quiet annoyed Scarlett. It left her to think over too many things. She tried hard not to think these days. Not to think about how tired she was. About how she had hardly sat down since that EMT tech had wrapped a blanket around her outside the burning apartment complex of The Jerk—the nickname that had replaced Hamvill. About how her back never stopped aching and her stomach never stopped growling. The constant headache of worry and remorse: Who lived in her house now? Who rode her horses? Would the combination of welfare and her minimum wage plus tips cover the expenses and feed the mouths? Was this actually her life? Slaving as a server at Cracker Barrel and calculating just how many cups of water she could put in the milk to make it last longer?

No one else seemed to worry. No one else seemed to care that they had lost everything. That if she hadn't been around to pick up their sorry, precious behinds, her sisters and her grandma would be out living on the streets. Well, not _no one_. Pork seemed to get it—he lived on the other side of the block with Dilcey and their girls. Working together on a prayer and a dime, Scarlett and he had done some hardcore fancy talking and brilliant economizing. Somehow they'd saved two of her father's factories from liquidation. She didn't have total ownership yet but she was determined to get it. She'd had to accept partial possession, sharing the bulk of the company with Frank Kennedy and his capital venture company. Getting back the majority of shares was the only thing that kept her going, pushing hard like she used to when she'd run cross country in high school. There's a point in every marathon where you just want to quit, when you're sure your legs are going to stop working. It's that terrible burn in your thighs that slices up your spine that you've got to just run through. If you don't you lose the race. If you do, you might just win it. And Scarlett wanted to win.

But the meager remains of her dad's bustling business might as well have been starting from scratch. Neither factory could turn a profit yet. Everything went toward settling debts or keeping the power on and the workers paid. Still on Scarlett's days off from serving tables she would go to the factories. It comforted her. The visits reminded her of tagging along as a child with her dad when he would make his rounds. The smells and sounds rang with money and security, of promises and paydays.

One day she would have those things. One day she would have it all. She'd never realized that's what she'd grown up with but losing everything had taught her that. It had taught her a few things about herself: that she was a survivor, that she was a fighter and that life sucks so you'd better be prepared to bite back. Hard. One day she wouldn't be pinching loose change from tip jars so that she could buy her sister a cupcake. One day she wouldn't visit her dad in a mental ward paid for by the state. One day she'd grind some $200 stiletto heels into every person who'd screwed her and her family over this past year. One day couldn't come fast enough.

"Scarlett?"

Melanie interrupted her just as she was imaging gouging out the eyes of a not-so faceless dark-haired man with the Jimmy Choos she'd had to sell on eBay. She sadly let her mad villain daydream fade and sighed heavily.

"Hmm?"

Melanie swiped the sweat from her brow, smearing soot on her face. She looked like she'd just come back from Mass on Ash Wednesday. Mass. Scarlett hadn't exactly been keeping up attending the local parish since her mother had died and her world had collapsed.

"Umm…Scarlett, maybe, maybe—"

She knew what Melanie was going to say and decided to nip it in the bud.

"Mel you know it's not an option."

"Look, I know. I know you want to take care of your family and you're doing a great job, but you should let me help. If you're not going to move back in with Aunt Pity and me at least move out of here."

Scarlett refused to answer, scrubbing furiously at the pan. She was not going to have this discussion tonight.

"I'm sure we could find a place big enough for everyone where the rent wouldn't be too high."

Her knuckles were starting to bleed, her fingers ripening with blisters.

"Let me give you some money."

Splash! She threw the dissolving pad into the soapy water.

"Money! What money? You've practically bankrupted yourself looking for—"

She wouldn't say the name. It was too painful. It was too aggravating. She couldn't talk about _him_ with _her_. She couldn't think about _him_ and _her_.

All things CIA were blacklisted in Scarlett's mind. No one could even say "Matt Damon" without setting her off and no one, _no one_, could mention The Jerk. But Melanie was so blind—blind with devotion to a county that had abandoned _him_. As if Melanie keeping her mouth shut was keeping _him _safe! Oh, she still preached and publicized but she hadn't done a thing to turn the screws on the people who could help. She hadn't betrayed whom Ashley actually worked for and what sort of mess he might actually be in. If 60 Minutes had approached Scarlett, she wouldn't have turned them down when they started asking the right questions!

She slopped sink water up her sleeve as her hand dove for the pad. She was getting too worked up. She had to switch gears. Change tactics.

"I'm not going to take charity, Mel." Scarlett attempted to add a little sugar to her tone. "This is the only apartment with enough bedrooms and low enough rent to keep my family and me under one roof."

"But," Melanie darted her eyes around as if someone was listening, "you're in the ghetto."

"It's not the ghetto. It's just not on the 'Street of Dreams' anymore."

"You were nearly robbed—in the middle of a Saturday afternoon!"

"Maybe I wasn't," replied Scarlett. The recently installed-conspiracy wheels now spinning. Painful and reluctant. Something about the "break-in" seemed off. The burglar could have snuck up on them. He'd had a gun; she'd noticed it on his way out.

"Okay, then…maybe he wanted something more than just your TV," whispered Melanie, her eyes huge with fear.

Scarlett put a halt to her own paranoid musings and rolled her eyes. She knew it had been a bad idea to introduce Melanie to late-night SVU marathons on cable. But Scarlett's insomnia was bad enough without Melly, knowing she was up, calling just to chat when she also couldn't sleep.

"I'm worried. A break-in! What would I do without you?"

Scarlett breathed in deeply and counted to ten. It didn't work.

"So I'll close the windows. Or next time I'll shoot the punk instead of my fichus. Isn't that why you gave me your brother's gun in the first place? Look, it worked out, didn't it? The police didn't find the gun, so Charlie is safe from prosecution and so are we. They swallowed your lies that the burglar shot a gun before leaving. We're as safe here as we are anywhere. I'm not leaving but you can! Go back to your house."

Melanie bit her lip. Her eyes crumpled.

Oh crap. Here comes…

"I'm so sorry Scarlett!"

The tears. Next comes…

"Let's not fight!"

The hug.

Melanie threw herself at Scarlett. A tiny wrecking ball of emotion. Scarlett wanted to shake her off. Touching was not her thing. Hugs definitely not. She resisted the impulse to move away and patted Melanie on the back. One, two. Her face rolled down in disgust. Why did girls always have to be so dramatic?

After much too long—maybe thirty seconds—Melanie scooted back, sniffling and smiling. Scarlett tried to grin in return. It looked like she'd swallowed the Brillo pad. She briskly dropped to her knees with a dust pan and hand broom. No need to prolong the awkwardness.

"So when do you think they'll get back? Carreen's special dinner was supposed to start in like ten minutes. Did they go to two movies or something?"

"No, just _The Hobbit_."

"What's taking so long?"

"It's a long movie."

Must be. They'd been gone for the entire afternoon. It _had_ proved beneficial. Her sisters' or even Mammy's presence would have complicated matters. No one but Scarlett knew that Melanie had illegally given her Charlie's gun, even Charlie. He had left it with Melanie before he took off for his two-year excursion to the Himalayas and would've been stunned to know the trigger had finally been pulled.

"We caught a lucky break that they're all gone," Scarlett said, her eyes burning with fatigue and her knees throbbing on the hard floor. "At least Frank's good for something."

"You mean his wallet? When you let him help, that is."

That was as close to sarcasm as Melanie came and Scarlett laughed. The laughter hid her shame. She'd never tell anyone exactly why she avoided taking more help from Frank or just how much she'd "talked" to him to win as much control of her dad's company as she currently had. Pork didn't even know that part. That was the way it had to be. Frank and Suellen were engaged now.

Scarlett glanced up and wondered what the woman in her kitchen would say if she knew. The only man Melanie had ever _kissed_ was her husband. Scarlett shook her head, half amused and half admiring. Melanie really did give a whole new meaning to the word frenemy.

"I'm glad you were here, Mel."

The words had bubbled out of her mouth like uncorked champagne. She didn't know what to make of them. She didn't have to make anything of them.

"Me, too," Melanie simply replied, barely turning her head away from scrubbing. Her mousy brown hair was a mess with dried flecks of extinguisher foam. Her clothes were rumpled and dirty, like she'd been rolling around in an ash tray. Scarlett stopped sweeping.

"Come on, why don't you go borrow some of my clothes. I think I have some capris that will work as pants on you."

"After the kitchen's done," Melanie said, squatting down and mopping the linoleum with a towel. She swatted Scarlett on the shoulder with it. "Sorry you had some charcoal-tomato on you."

"Thanks. I think I'll go get my phone and call for pizza."

Flipping open her cell—she'd had to back out of her data plan and settle for a regular, no-frills phone—she dialed the number for Maybello's Pizzas. She tapped her foot as she was put on hold, watching Melanie finish off the last of the mopping. The woman still bugged Scarlett—with her save the world ways and bleeding heart. So perfect. So prissy. So…patriotic. But Melanie did always seem to have her back. And Scarlett was starting to appreciate loyalty. The kind she felt certain didn't exist in any man but her daddy. She flicked some gunk off her arm and realized she was wearing The Jerk's grey sweatshirt. Maybe she would let Frank pay for the pizza tonight.

The girl came back on the line.

"What's your most expensive item?" she asked, wadding up the coupon and chucking it in the trash can.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: Mammy Curtain Scene**

* * *

_Question: Why do we always revert to our fifteen year old selves around family? Answer: Your guess is as good as mine._

"Oh no you can't!"

"Oh yes I can."

"If you put one more foot toward that closet door, I swear to you child, I will bruise your behind so badly you'll be standing so long that…"

Scarlett folded her arms and glared as Mammy sucked in her breath, filling her lungs with the threat. It was going to be epic.

"Lifetime makes a movie out of you!"

Scarlett blinked and almost laughed. Usually Mammy's threats ran along the lines of "your knees will crack," or "your spine will cave in." Her grandma noticed her amused surprise and as a huffy aside growled, "Carreen's got me watching that trash with her. They're addicting as sin."

Scarlett laughed louder just to bother her but Mammy's ebony face hardened and she pointed an angry finger.

"Don't think you can sidetrack me now Scarlett. Not for one minute! You can be as full of sass and spit with everyone else, but just because I'm old does not mean I'm senile."

Scarlett's face sparked at the challenge. She feinted to the left then bolted to the right, slipping past Mammy's enormous girth and reaching the coat closet. She twisted the knob, tore it open and ripped out her mother's perfectly preserved, garment-bag sealed wedding dress. She spun back around, panting with triumph and adrenaline.

"Maybe you're not senile, but you are slow!"

Oops. Too much. Mammy's hand crashed down and clamped around her ear.

"Ow! Mammy let go! You're hurting me."

Her grandma didn't listen to her plea. Grumbling like a coffee-grinder she dragged Scarlett down the hallway and into the bedroom she shared with her sisters. She flung Scarlett onto the bed and slammed the door.

"For the love Mammy! I'm twenty-one! You can't just—"

"To quote you, child, Oh yes I can." She stomped over to her and snatched the wedding dress, cradling it against her body with care. "Now, if you are going to sell this dress on Greg's List you've got some serious explaining to do little miss. That Greg's list—"

"Craig's list! For the last time, Mammy, it's not Dave's list or Meg's list or Greg's list. It's Craig's list. C-r-a-i-g." Scarlett yelled, exasperated and in pain. Mammy hadn't pinched her like that since she was ten and had stolen five dollars out of her purse to buy some lip gloss. "And I'm not selling the dress!"

She barely reeled in the "there." The truth was she was going to try and sell it.

"Fine, maybe you're not selling it on that usurper of want ads but you are selling it. Don't you deny it either."

"Oh my gosh! You are crazy! Usurper of want ads? It's a website not a…not a, whatever a usurper is."

"Don't mince words. You want to sell this wedding dress. Now tell it to me straight or you don't touch it."

Scarlett rubbed her throbbing ear and dug her nails into the throw pillow beside her. How had Mammy known? Scarlett hadn't told anyone about the fashion charity auction!

"Come on Scarlett, sugar. I can see it your eyes." Mammy smiled knowingly and sidled onto Suellen's bed jammed across the room. The mattress and the woman creaked as they sunk down into the disheveled bedspread "Now spill."

Scarlett hurled the pillow still clutched in her claws onto the floor. What did Mammy do? Hack into her emails? Spy on her? Tap her phones? If her grandma hadn't been the most non-tech savvy seventy year old around she wouldn't have put it past her. As it was, Mammy still needed written directions on how to work the DVD player and refused to go anywhere near the "unnatural" computer. In fact the only invention from the last ten years she did like was the Kindle of all things. "I can make my bible-print big and keep up on the news without scrunching my eyes." By "news" Scarlett knew she meant the tabloids. So how had Mammy known?

"I'm old, Scarlett. I ain't got nothing better to do. Dr Oz is a rerun today."

"Fine! I'm selling it—but before you go all ballistic on me…" Sudden inspiration shot through her mind. Mammy was always a sucker for needy causes. "I'm only selling it for charity. There's a fashion charity auction next week and for however much the dress goes for, a donor will match it to fund some African refugee camp."

Mammy glowered. She wasn't impressed and she wasn't convinced.

"That sounds like what you'd call in my day a con."

"It's still called a con, but this isn't a con."

More beady eye squints. The opposite of promising.

"It's not. I got the invitation for being on the board of a local company. You know how these big wig charity extravaganzas go. Black ties, too much wine and a bunch of hot shots that get to feel better about themselves for doing something good for the little people."

Scarlett twisted her mouth. Honestly she was starting to sound as bad as her dad used to about Big Government and the New York Yankees. If her father hated anything it was those two things: He called socialist countries the devil's playgrounds and he called the Yankees the embodiment of all evil. If she wasn't careful she'd end up launching her own website and starting a conspiracy blog like her dad had "as a wee little hobby" before everything had fallen apart.

Scarlett focused back on Mammy. It looked like she was relenting, a little. The creases in her forehead had gone from about a million to a dozen. Scarlett scooted to the edge of her bed and curved the sweetest, most innocent-looking smile she could muster.

"Please Mam-mam," she begged, using the name she'd called her as a toddler. "If you donate a dress worth more than $5,000 you don't have to pay for the cost of entry. And this affair's going for $1,000 bucks a plate. I had the dress appraised and it's worth like $10,000."

If she'd known its worth before today she would've sold it a year ago. Too late. Mammy was still on the fence, so Scarlett pushed her most effective tool. The charity angle.

"It's win-win-win. We'll get a slice of the final amount the dress goes for and nearly twice as much as that will go to those poor, young kids in Zawubaba or Barunana...nali," she stuttered.

Those sounded Africany enough. She hadn't the faintest clue what the name of the country was where the proceeds were going.

"Branunananali? My word child, did you learn anything in high school?"

"I learned that my Mammy could out-yell every other person on the bleachers when I was on the field."

Mammy's old face nearly cracked with a grin, but she stuffed it back down and wryly asked, "And what else?"

"What do you mean what else?"

She raised her furry-white eye brows.

"You said win-win-win, Scarlett. What's the last win for?"

She was quick.

"There is no other win, I was just talking," she lied.

Mammy didn't take the bait. Her scowl returned with full-on wrinkles.

"Tell me. Now."

"No, there's nothing to tell."

"Not good enough. That's it. I'm leaving."

She heaved up off the bed and marched to the door.

Desperate, suddenly so desperate, Scarlett yelled, "You can't take the dress! It doesn't belong to you. It belonged to my mother and my real grandmother—not you!"

She regretted it the minute she said it. Unfortunately there is a strict No Returns Policy on cruel words. Mammy lumbered to a halt, her back to Scarlett.

"Mammy," she slid off the bed. "Mammy I'm…I'm…"

She touched Mammy's shoulder and the old lady shirked her off in one shrug. Her salt and pepper head started slowly shaking side to side. Her voice sounded so distant and so drained when she spoke. Scarlett's knees trembled and her gut twisted. Sickness and regret plunked into her heart.

"You know, Scarlett. You've always been my favorite. And Lord knows I've put up with a lot from you over the years. I put up with your tantrums and your smart, with your boy craziness and your bullying. I even turned a blind eye this last year when I saw you in the car with your sister's fiancé."

Scarlett's tremors froze and cold covered her blood. How had Mommy seen her with Frank? How? A denial rushed to her lips but she silenced it. Something in Mammy's icy tone warned Scarlett that Mammy wouldn't think any better of her if she knew Scarlett hadn't actually had sex with Frank. Her grandmother—the only grandmother she'd ever known—turned around. Her beautiful black face gleamed with a frightening light.

"I will forgive you for saying that. I will forgive you because I love you. But I cannot forget. Not so quick."

She shoved the wedding dress into Scarlett's arms and walked out the door. Scarlett stumbled back to the bed. She felt miserable. That jab had not been her best moment. And she couldn't even blame a visit from Aunt Flow. She knew a wipeout of that magnitude wasn't from her currently surfing the crimson tide. These days her irritability was always dialed up to maximum strength—pms-ing aside. What had happened to her that she would lash out at Mammy of all people? Angry and ashamed she screwed up her face and started to cry into the musty-smelling garment bag. She had broken the one unbreakable family rule: Never mention Grandpa Robillard's first wife.

No one ever even hinted at the fact that Mammy wasn't they're real grandma—even if the difference in their shades of Covergirl pointed out the obvious lack of shared-genetics. Some things were just not discussed. Didn't need to be. Of course, Scarlett knew the story. She knew how Mammy and Grandma Robillard had been best friends, these free-thinking hippies in the seventies fighting for the Georgia chapter of NOW. She'd seen the stuffed-away photographs of Mammy with her Afro and her drop-dead gorgeous best friend smiling arm in arm at a bra-burning rally. Scarlett knew, from some drunken ballgame rants à la her dad, that her mom's real mom had ditched her bellbottoms, family and best friend for some woman named Phillipa. Mammy, always dependable, always deserving Mammy had stayed around to pick up the pieces of her flighty friend's mess, to mend the hearts of the deserted husband and three abandoned daughters. To eventually fall in love and shock the 1970's Savannah society with a marriage between a rich white man whose granddaddy used to own a plantation and a black woman whose grandma used to be a slave. And now Scarlett had broken that woman's heart.

She kicked herself for not taking that Midol two hours ago. Maybe it could've helped. She cried some more, big wet, ugly tears and screeched into her pillow. The worst of it was she knew that she was still going to go against Mammy's wishes and sell the dress. She had to get into this high-priced fashion auction.

Earlier yesterday she'd learned that Jonas Wilkerson—a former exec who'd cost her dad a boatload of litigation fees for falsely claiming he owned the patent on one of their factory drill bit designs—was maneuvering to make a bid on her company with some insider trader information. If Scarlett couldn't buy back full ownership soon she'd lose everything. Again. That simply could not happen. No matter how many relationships she had to bulldoze right now, she couldn't stop her plan to rebuild her dad's company. She would come back later and make things right. Tonight she would buy Mammy some Rocky Road and tomorrow, whenever that distant tomorrow came, she would buy Mammy that condo on the beach she'd always wanted and definitely deserved. If things worked out at the charity auction maybe that tomorrow was closer than she knew.

Next week's fundraiser was Scarlett's one shot. A long shot, but a good one. For Mammy had been right that there was another "win" involved. Scarlett wasn't attending the auction just to sell the dress at above market value. She was attending it because Butler United, The Jerk's company, was hosting it.

Months ago she'd thoroughly erased him from her life: deleted his name or face from every email, Facebook picture, or text message. Out of the blue last month she'd gotten a call from an unknown number. Unthinkingly she'd answered and then hung up before that Charlestonian drawl could finish "Hello." So he was back. Who knew? He might have been for awhile. And she wasn't about to just waltz into his high-rise office in worn-out Nikes and three-season's past-their prime Dolce and Gabano jeans like some washed-up hooker asking for money from a former Jon. In two minutes she would take the hair dryer to the block of ice safeguarding her AmEx and tomorrow she would go shopping downtown. She couldn't help but smile—a crazy-bag-lady, Charlie Sheen most-winning-est grin. The filthy rich, mercenary spy had better be at his own charity fundraiser and he had better bring his check book. The Jerk didn't know it, but in five days he was going to give her the loan the bank and even Frank had denied her this morning.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: I am more interested in exploring what the characters do and how they interact in our world than exact scenes, per say. So Carreen's and Will's bits were more to display what those relationships might be like today, a general feel for them. The part with the "beaux" was a mix of the opening scene from the book (and movie), the furlough at Aunt Pitty's, the surrendering men passing through Tara for some hospitality and the afternoon Scarlett spends with the Tarleton clan when she sees the boys' gravestones. Now today I just can't justify her losing 80% of the men her age. **

* * *

_Question: Can one person feel all of those things? Answer: Only men have the emotional depth of a teaspoon. (Play on JK.)_

"So, what do you say Will? You want to go with me tomorrow night?"

"Don't involve me in your tawdry sexcapades," he drawled dead-pan as a dummy and chewing on a minty toothpick from work.

"Oh, har-har," Scarlett replied, punching him in the chest. "You can get out of my apartment this instant."

"Wow, was that supposed to be a threat?" He rubbed his hand gingerly over where she'd hit him. "If I wanted to get abused I would've stayed at work and let Hilton smack me around. At least then I'd get worker's comp."

Hilton was the annoying owner; Will was both the GM and floor manager of the Cracker Barrel where Scarlett worked. He did double-duty, never complaining. Just worked with his head down and got things done. She swatted him in the chest again and he dodged the assault, shielding himself with the pillow.

"Look, no matter how many times you hit me," he peeked his nearly-albino face from around the pillow. "I'm still saying no."

Scarlett scowled and spun her knees up onto the couch. Great. She was now begging a guy. A guy whom she considered a brother even though she'd only known him a year. It was a novelty, but it had always been that way with Will. From the moment he'd hired her, during the short interview even, they'd just sort of clicked. No passion, no flirting. Just click. For the first time she'd had an instant friend—and with a guy she wouldn't have even talked to in high school. Will screamed "hick boy with a love for all things Comic-Con related."

"Please. I need to bring someone. Why not you? You'd clean up alright. Not a total hottie but a vast improvement."

"Well, with that sort of pick-up line how can a guy turn a gal down?" He tossed the pillow in her face and her nostrils stung from the fuzz. She plopped off her knees and slid down beside his lanky frame. Their bony shoulders touched.

"Will—believe it or not, but you're the only actual guy friend I have who doesn't want to get into my bra and panties."

He shot his droopy, dull eyes on her. A mixture of pity and resolve in them.

"Sorry, Scarlett. I can't. What would I do at an event like that? A charity auction—for dresses? No thanks. You're lucky that I've swapped your schedule with Cathleen's so you can even go. That's all I can do for you."

She pouted her naturally collagen-filled lips and batted her CGI-esque green eyes. Nada. Will just smirked. He was as stubborn as she was. Her seductive sulk fell and she blew out a grumpy exhale.

"Fine, but just so you know I'm going to look—"

"Angry? Because that's how you look now."

He stood up and shrugged on his coat.

"You're going?"

"I have to close _and_ open."

"Alright. Thanks for the ride home."

She flipped on the TV. It was something to do instead of thinking about the fact that she, Scarlett O'Hara, couldn't find a date. What the girls from her old sorority would say now. She started blasting through the countless channels without really thinking—cable was included in the rent. Will stopped at the door.

"Scarlett, you should just go stag. Seriously, there's nothing more attractive than a girl who is confident." His pale eyes pierced hers. "Your looks alone will make a guy jealous he's not with you, you don't need me messing it up."

She smiled with only her lips, wondering how he'd known she was aiming to make someone jealous and wishing that his words were true.

"Good night, Will."

He waved and as an afterthought, his white cheeks almost turning pink, added, "Uh, tell Carreen I said bye."

She smiled all the way this time. He stammered but then closed his mouth, waved again and left.

Carreen walked into the living room right after, with her nose in a book and mumbled.

"Oh is Will gone?"

"He said to tell you bye."

Careen nodded and sat on the semi-comfortable recliner. Most of the furniture in their apartment was from second-hand stores or cheap DYI sets from IKEA. Almost all of the things they'd grown up with had been repossessed, not that their hundred-year old china hutch would've fit in this match box three-bedroomer.

Scarlett went back to the TV. Hundreds of channels and nothing was on. Her legs itched to move. She was ancy and agitated. Maybe she ought to go for a jog.

"Scarlett?"

"Yeah?" She paused her pointless channel-surfing and muted the sound. "What's up Reeny?"

"How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

That stopped her legs from twitching. The remote slipped out of her hand.

"What?"

Carreen stared calmly at her and repeated her question. Scarlett ran her hand over her face and rubbed the back of her neck. She got on much better with Carreen than with Suellen but they weren't exactly close. The O'Haras just weren't that sort of family. They didn't talk about stuff. Case in point: For the past few days Mammy and she had politely weaved in and out of each other's way, still tender-footed and cautious as walking on glass. Now, all of a sudden, her baby sister was bucking the family trend and conversationally asking her about her sex life?

"Why do you want to know?"

She wondered if it had something to do with her sister's book. She squinted at the cover and instantly knew it had everything to do with her sister's book, or more accurately, her sister's third hand.

"Why are you reading Twilight again? Are you trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records or something?"

"No," Carreen squeaked and clapped the book shut, highlighted pages flipping before Scarlett's view. "It's just…It does talk about losing your virginity and stuff."

"Yeah, well next time some Prince Charming Vampire wants to have sex with you we can discuss my love life."

She dug the remote out from under the couch and was about ready to unmute the sound when Carreen quietly admitted, "Brent's been pressuring me to have sex with him."

Down went the remote again.

"He's been what? You're only—he's my age! Even older! I knew you'd gone out a few times, but are you really that serious?"

Scarlett's brain wasn't working right and it was clogging up her tongue. Brent and she had only ever flirted, but they'd been friends a long time. Was he seriously angling to get it on with her baby sister? Next time she saw him, he best be prepared to get read the riot act.

"He's been called up for the Reserves. He'll go on active duty soon. It's…"

"That's no reason to have sex with him Reeny."

Carreen bit her lip and started raking her fingers through the microfiber upholstery, swirling shadows and lines into the chair.

"What made you feel ready? Why did you decide to have sex?"

Hot in the face Scarlett thought about that first time: the hormones raging, the guy asking and then that sudden surge of power: power from rebelling, power from knowing how badly he wanted her and in that moment, the power of knowing she had absolute control over him. Scarlett sensed that her sex life was missing something—lying just beyond the expanse of her encounters. And she wasn't thinking about finding her "G-spot." She'd never had a problem enjoying the physicality of sex. That was just it. Sex was so physical for her—all sweat and movement and a final rush. Only twice had she begun to feel that it could be more, that it should be more.

The first time had been with Ashley. The touches and fever had been dream-like, drenched in water colors and sweet flavors. The replay of a daydream pulsed into reality. But now that experience was clouded by the passing of years and the failings of memory. Had it been being wrapped in Ashley's arms or had it been that she was so wrapped up in being with Ashley? Had it been dreamy because she'd been dreaming of it? The questions were complicated enough, the answers impossible to solve. He was probably dead and if not dead he was definitely married.

The second time she'd crossed, briefly, over the borders of that elusive horizon had left her just as confused. It was a year ago. With…Rhett. She stuttered over thinking his actual name. Still once was all it took. Images and sensations, caresses and rhythms washed over her and trickled through her veins. For the first time she allowed herself to remember the fire—not the orange-smoke swirling through the corridors—but his eyes, his hands and his mouth. Nothing pastel about that time—it had been black. Soft and hard as night.

"So are you going to answer me?"

Carreen watched her, a quizzical expression on her baby-smooth face. Scarlett could feel the speckles of red on her cheeks and the spots of sweat on her skin. Acting nonchalant, she picked up a mailer at her feet and fanned herself for a minute before answering. The guys, the places, the ways flooded into her mind and spilled an icky, dry coating on her tongue.

"Don't have sex until you want to Carreen. Don't do it until you're ready and—as cheesy as it sounds—until you really love the guy."

Carreen nodded and chewed some more on her lip.

"But that's just it Scarlett. I don't think sex should be about want. I don't even think it should be just about love." Her face suddenly brightened and Scarlett could see her mother in her sister's expression: warm and kind, patient and above all things, devout. Unexpected tears lurked at the corners of her green eyes as Carreen's timid voice vibrated with—it took her a moment to find the word—conviction.

"I believe in God Scarlett. I believe that he's real and…well, I believe in what we were taught in Sunday School, what mama taught us. I…I know you struggle to have faith and that's fine. Everyone needs to figure out what they think is real and what's not on their own. But I believe, especially after everything we've gone through this year. I don't know what I would have done without prayer."

Scarlett suffered a nip of guilt. She couldn't remember the last time she'd prayed. It just didn't seem useful. How would kneeling down help pay the electric bill? If there was a God, which she wasn't sure of, she figured he was probably as busy as she was trying to keep things from going under. He didn't need her pestering him with her complaints. But seeing that light shine out from Carreen's deep eyes, Scarlett wished she could feel for one moment her sister's certainty for things unseen and hope for a world unknown.

"Then, sissy," the pet name she'd called Carreen as a child rolled gently off her tongue, "you do what you think is right."

Carreen smiled.

"Thanks. I think I will. I think I'll wait, don't laugh, but I think I'll try and wait until I'm married."

Scarlett didn't laugh. She had no desire to, especially when Carreen described in pure innocence the concept she, with all her years of sexual activity, had been unable to define.

"I just think that sex is so much more than…mechanics. It's just…it's like Communion. It means more than what it appears. Sex should be two committed souls, as one, touching the divine."

Trying not to be too conspicuous, Carreen slowly re-opened her one vice—anything to do with sappy love stories. Now Scarlett really wanted to hit the pavement at a sprint. Carreen's words had struck something deep and untapped in her that she wasn't prepared to think about. Something she just didn't have the brain-power to compute with everything else going on. And for Scarlett nothing cleared the mind like a jog.

Ten minutes later, decked out in some thin-soled running shoes and mangy night gear, she bounced out the door and down into the street. The September cool fog enveloped her and stuck to her skin. It slunk out more thickly into the late night as Scarlett jogged past a 7-11 and around the block. Within only a few minutes she dripped from the soupy air and the fast pace. It was creepy pounding through the mist and unable to see too far in front of her. Her mom had never really watched TV or movies, always too busy or too tired, but she would occasionally turn on an old black and white film. Jogging through this natural, chilly sauna reminded Scarlett of a scene from one of those shows: all color was obscured and painted with grey undertones. The feeling made Scarlett cut her run short. She felt trapped and blind. She was kicking her heels as hard as she could on the concrete but the background never changed, like a cartoon mouse flailing its legs while the cat unknowingly has its tail. Was she even moving forward?

Her mind was still a little cloudy, but overall she felt better when she climbed up the apartment steps. She stuck her key in the lock and was surprised to hear voices on the other side—loud, familiar voices. Smiling she pushed open the door and before she could so much as throw her keys on the side table Stu had her in a neck hold and was razing her scalp with his knuckles, telling her to scream uncle.

"Off! Off!"

"No—say it, say it!"

"Fine! Uncle!"

"Car-Car!" yelled Tony as he punched her in the shoulder.

"Don't," she warned him, but she couldn't help but grin. "Car-car" was their 'loving handle' for her for some of the stuff she'd pulled in high school—with her parent's car and no driver's license. The entire clan was overtaking her living room—Stu and Raif on the floor, Tony in the recliner and Cade, Carreen and Brent on the sofa. She tripped over Raif's legs, or he tripped her legs. She hadn't seen many of them for months now—apart from their incessant instagrams she had to view on her desktop these days. All of them were on scholarship for some sport at state schools, or enlisted in a branch of the military like Brent.

She narrowed her eyes on him. No time like the present for a shake down. It might help her shake the spidery-unrest that kept crawling over her skin, and brain, all day.

Brent noticed her pointed stare and she curled her finger for him to follow. He unwound his arm from Carreen's shoulder and jumped up, trailing her into the kitchen.

"Brent, when did you get serious with my baby sister?"

No need to be allusive. She filled a glass of water and guzzled it as he stuttered and muttered. She smacked the cup hard on the counter and whipped around to him. Arching a coy smile, she sauntered over. His eyes grew wide, half shocked and half excited. She backed him up against the fridge, sporting her most smoldering expression.

"Brent, you know don't tell Stu," she scrunched her nose and lightly glided her finger up his Crimson Tide muscle tee, "but I've always thought you were the cuter of the two."

He gulped.

"Scarlett, you know, for a long time this was my favorite fantasy—well you'd be more like the hot Spice girl with Beckham and not the Sporty one— but I'm…I'm with your sister."

She flipped her face to innocent surprise, her voice oozing with her rural accent.

"I don't mean nothing by this, Brent. Hey, do you remember that time we were all playin' on that water tower and you fell?"

Pure confusion in those baby blues.

"Of course I do. I missed a whole season on the sidelines from breaking my femur and well, busted my balls pretty badly too."

Scarlett's leg was positioned just so. She lurched it up and his eyes popped as he groaned.

"What the—"

"If I ever hear about you pressuring my sister for sex again, you're going to wish you could fall off that water tower every day of your life."

She patted him on his hunched over back and whispered into his ear, "Don't worry you passed both tests. Good luck on your tour, Brenty."

Satisfied she walked into the living room. The guys were all laughing and teasing, fighting over what to watch. Her pleased smirk vanished. The faces and voices in the room pulled her through time, tugging at her navel with pleasant pain. Suddenly she was in a world free of worries where the days slipped by with her mom and she slurping hot cocoa after a bad break up and her dad sneaking her some extra allowance money to buy that necklace she'd wanted.

The uninvited vision lulled her—but the scene didn't last. It snapped into nothing and the carefree, easiness of the guys suddenly played out as though viewed from an aerial camera. The distant feeling nagged at her. Why did she suddenly feel a part from it all? Not part of it all? Why couldn't she look as content as, maybe not the happy-go-lucky boys, but Carreen? Her sister laughed on the couch like her world hadn't been broken. Like her dad wasn't heavily sedated. Like her clothes weren't worn or second-hand. Like her mother hadn't died. Why couldn't the worry and stress really leave Scarlett's thoughts and not just constantly snicker at her from the back burner of her mind?

Stu noticed her and winked, and the uncomfortable stitch in her heart of isolation and something else eased. She reminded herself she had a game plan and gave the quick mental pep talk she'd been repeating over the last few days: It's going to work. I'm going to get control of my dad's company again. Somehow getting control of the company was the same as taking back control of her life.

Stu winked again and fluffed the pillow beside him on the carpet. The corners of her mouth quivered upwards. If only Stu wasn't back on with India, she would ask him to the auction. As it was, she was pretty certain India would murder her in some gruesome way if she moved in on her guy…for the second time. In fact she was more than pretty certain. India's threat had not exactly been "veiled."

Scarlett and Brent had never kissed but Stu and she—now that was a different story. Nothing more than some hot make-out sessions, one really good one in the Tarleton's pool house after the guys had won state their senior year and her sophomore year stood out at the moment. The non-buzz-kill memory lifted her mood just enough and she picked her way through the mess of limbs to sit on the floor beside her old-high school flame.

The debate over what to watch had morphed into a silent, glower bro-brawl. Cade was glaring bitterly at Tony for swiping the remote from him. He'd been watching some show called Storage Wars: Dixie Style and Tony had just flipped the channel to "The New Southern Belle," a reality series about a retired porn star. Scarlett glanced at the screen and saw a middle-aged, curvy lady with a terrible dye job and an inch of cosmetics on her face. Who would want to hit that? The next minute, she screamed as Raif rammed into her but was actually glad that he was stealing the control from Tony. A tag-team wrestling match ensued, and the victor—Stu—turned it to something all could agree on—at least all the guys: ESPN.

Scarlett played with her ponytail. Everyone settled into an easy, friendly back and forth about college football but Brent, who had crept back in from the kitchen and was keeping his distance from Scarlett, mentioned Alabama and the banter immediately escalated to an animated argument. After ten minutes of non-stop, nonsensical ranting Scarlett exclaimed that if she heard the acronyms BCS or SEC one more time she would kick them all out. She snatched the remote away and dared anyone to defy her. No one did. She was just breezing through station after station until she found some late-night talk show when she saw him. They all saw him.

"Holy mother—" started Cade.

"That's Ashley Wilkes," finished Raif.

With a gnarly, grunge beard and an emaciated face, Ashley Wilkes' grey eyes stared back at them through the TV screen. The headline graphics on CNN read in big, bold letters: US State Dept. Employee released from N. Korean Prison.

Scarlett's phone buzzed in the little arm pocket of her running sweatshirt and without breaking eye contact with the TV image, she answered.

"Hey, Mel. Yeah, we're watching."

_Note: I think a modern Scarlett would be completely aware of the power of her sexuality and use it to suit her wants and needs. But I think she would be completely unaware of the power of true intimacy. Until someone taught her. Speaking of...I've been wanting to get to the next chapter for a long while. I've missed Rhett. And no one guessed Will was her manager. At least I don't' think they did. Maybe I was a little too cute with the Cracker=Will bit._


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: Jail Scene**

* * *

_Question: What's your sign? Answer: Caution-Men at Work._

"Has anyone ever told you, you look like a pirate?"

He swallowed a grin.

"Not recently."

"Oh," Scarlett said. "Cause you do."

Her head lopped forward like a marionette's and immediately bobbed back up. It felt so heavy and her neck felt so weak. She squeezed her eyes open and shut a couple times. Bright, white light glared at her from all directions. It diffracted into a dozen prism-shaped spots in her vision. Why was she inside a chandelier? She bobbled her head to the pirate sitting beside her.

The dark eyes and shadowy jaw were so familiar, but it couldn't be him. She hadn't seen him in over a year. Her mouth hanging open, she watched her hand float in the air as if connected to invisible strings and start to brush the side of the tan, whiskered face. She giggled and leaned in, smelling his warm neck.

She rolled her head back onto his shoulder and looked up. The rustle of her lashes against his shirt echoed in her ears.

"You smell just like him too," she grinned, sniffing the musky, sweet scent. "Hmm…I've missed his cologne."

His eyes crinkled and his full lips lifted at the corners. He touched the side of her face. The grooves of his fingerprints bumped along her skin.

"Did you miss him?" he asked and she wondered why the stranger sounded sad.

"Of course I missed him," she slurred, pulling away and swaying in the breezeless, shiny room. "Don't tell him but he's a really good kisser—and for an old guy he's really hot."

He didn't sound sad anymore. He was laughing. Had she missed a joke?

She blinked slowly. Black puddles were muddying up the crystals in her vision. The pirate's face was muddled at the edges. Maybe she wasn't in an inky chandelier. Maybe she was inside the sun. Her skin spiked with heat and she started to yank down her sleeves. Green silk? No wonder she was sweating.

"Ah-ah-ah."

He wrapped his hands around her wrists and stopped her from ripping open her front. He suddenly swore and turned away. She noticed silver and black chairs now and the fuzzy outlines of other people. Why wasn't anyone else worried about hanging out in a white fire? Why wasn't blurry Jack Sparrow?

"Hey, somebody—you, nurse—she's burning up."

The last thing Scarlett remembered before passing out was the Rhett-double mouthing words that looked oddly like "Stay awake."

* * *

A few hours before Scarlett stood at a bar, sipping an Appletini, unaware of how messed up this night would end. She should have had her suspicions, though. Halfway finished with the charity auction and nothing was going as planned.

"Girl, you must be tired, because you've been running through my mind all night!"

She sighed, and restraining the urge to whip around and fling her cocktail in the speaker's face, carefully set the glass down on the bar counter and turned around.

"Funny," she joked, flicking her lethal-green eyes over the encroacher. "Very Funny Carey."

Carey Ashburn's too-white teeth and too-orange face split into a grin. He leaned up along side her and his bucket of aftershave dumped into her nostrils.

"I could have said," he glided his finger over the edge of her shoulder, "that dress would look stunning as a pile of clothes in my room in the morning—much better than the other pile you left a couple years ago."

"Where do you come up with these? They're so original."

Scarlett wound back to the counter and lifted her drink. With her lips still poised above the rim, she said, "Go away, Carey. I'm not interested in seconds."

"Ouch," he fake-exclaimed. "Your loss, O'Hara."

He smacked her on the tuckus as he strutted away and she ground her teeth. He had been another mistake. A six-date, freshman coed, one romp big mistake. At first blush he'd wooed her with his sophomore status and pitcher's build. Then she'd discovered his ego was as big as his mouth. Before he could try for another "homerun," she'd ended it. She gulped down her drink and signaled for another. Why couldn't this night end?

Any other time she would have counted this as an all-out knockdown success. The constant, slobbering, attempted pick-ups proved that much. There wasn't a society chick or desperate diva here that could hijack her hotness-supremacy. For once she liked the fact that her ivory undertones couldn't wear a tan, real or fake. Her pale complexion made everything else on her stand out. Her thick, mahogany hair was twisted up in a mass of waves. Her green silk dress hung snug against her waist and torso, elegant and loose along her neck and shoulders, bare on her back and fanned out at the base. It was long-sleeved, which was unusual for her—but when she'd spotted it in a boutique downtown it had screamed: "I was designed for you!" (Oddly in a French accent.) Pulling out all the stops, she'd even ditched a real bra and decided to let her perky breasts and some stick-on lifts do their jobs. Whoop-di-do. None of it mattered.

Two hours into this gamble and no sign of Rhett. She'd hitched her hopes to this rocket, with a sign reading "Auction or Bust" and her plans were imploding in spectacular flames. With all of Atlanta watching—except the only citizen she needed. Ashburn was here! Hugh Elsing was here—a failed blind-date! Even Raoul, good old, now married Raoul, was serving drinks at the other bar across the room! Where was the host? The backer? The Jerk?

For all the glitz and glam, Scarlett was bushwhacked. Last night she'd barely slept a wink. Tossing and turning about what she'd seen on the news: Ashley's enigmatic, dramatic return and what she'd do tonight: Would she convince or connive or charm Rhett enough to save her business? Going to this fundraiser solo had sucked up what little strength she did have. Languishing at the bar had dried up her leftover courage. And if she had to listen to one more, lame come-on she was certain her brittle calm would crack. The rumor that her family wedding dress was being silently auctioned off at a holler-worthy $25,000 barely impressed her—she needed much more than that to stave off Wilkerson and his mignons.

Scarlett rubbed the crick in her neck, her gaze zooming over the beautiful decorations. A million gold lights twinkled and cascades of real ivy and lilies dangled from the walls of this fully-renovated, former Civil War prison. An actual, real-live orchestra played swirling melodies from a bandstand and white-topped tables, each with elaborate miniature fondue fountains, edged the open dance floor. In a side annex all the dresses were up for display on quartz mannequins. Most of the dresses were vintage, so thankfully no one had attempted to wear them down a cat walk. She couldn't have wished for a more perfect party. The bingo crowd's music aside, if she ever got married this would be the blueprint for her reception: Lilies were her favorite, 'The Melting Pot' had been her guilty-pleasure restaurant before her life had hit the fan, and the only absolute she affirmed was that every party should have a dance floor.

Big deal. This wasn't her wedding, this wasn't even her night. So she'd meet her life's destruction in style, with Peter Pick-up and Pervert Paul telling her they wanted to sop her biscuits in chocolate fondue. Whatever that meant. Stirring the umbrella in her drink she finally understood that annoying song the GenX potheads used to play reggae-style outside the corner Starbucks: _Isn't it ironic_.

A hand rested on her shoulder and her tenuous control snapped. Without turning around, she shoved the fingers off her and clipped, "No, Ashburn, I'm not cold and no, I don't want to use you as a blanket!"

"Well, that's a relief. It'd be a shame to cover up that dress—especially with someone else."

The clatter of the room silenced and her spine rammed straight. Stay calm. Stay cool. Stick to the plan. Whatever rage boiled in her gut, whatever excitement sparked in her veins, she suppressed. Her misty eyes slanted and her lips feinted upwards. Methodically she twisted around, angling her body into an S-curve, her arm slung up on the counter and her hip pushed out to the side.

It'd been so long since she'd seen him that she'd forgotten how good-looking he was. Tall, dark, handsome—and built. His tailored tuxedo flawlessly clung to and relaxed against all the right places of his body. A body she suddenly remembered very, very clearly. The faintest blush rippled over her face and neck. He smiled, just enough for his teeth to peek out from his lips. Just enough for her to know he could still read her mind. His arrogant gaze oozed underneath her green silk—not that the thinness of the fabric left much to be imagined—and the flush of rose tinted red on her skin.

This moment, his evident attraction and her obvious flaunting would have been ideal—if, there was always an 'if' these days, he had been alone. She grappled to squash the disappointment—and something that reminded her of jealousy. Who ever that red-haired hussy on his arm was, she'd better check herself. Scarlett was fully prepared to wreck her.

"Look what the cat dragged in," she said, smirking and letting that dimple wink. Scarlett didn't so much as glance at the other woman.

"Are you the cat? I've always considered myself a dog person. Cats tend to nip too much."

His eyes blatantly pinged on her barely-brassiered chest. She literally bit her tongue to stop from telling him to shut up and keep his eyes up. This was going to be difficult, especially with the _Real Housewives of Atlanta_ stand-in laughing at his side. Wait. Scarlett shot her eyes to the unknown entity. She wasn't unknown! She'd seen her last night. Tony had drooled all over himself watching her take her son to Little League practice in hot pants and a halter top.

"Scarlett, this is an old friend of mine, Belle Watling." Rhett grinned like he knew Scarlett recognized the porn turned reality star, and smoothly finished the introduction. "Belle, this is the girl I told you about."

Scarlett bit her tongue again. Girl? She'd show Rhett just what a 'girl' could do. Quickly she sized Belle up. She was more toned down in person—wearing too much make-up still but not the clown-paint of her television persona. She had a nice body—for a forty year old.

Scarlett smiled faintly, cooing, "Pleasure to meet you."

Belle smiled in return, neither fooled nor frightened. Her Maybelline-gouped eyes yelled 'back off' as she twanged with a Kelly Pickler accent.

"Pleasure's all mine sweetie pie, but I sure hope you're not calling me the cat either." Belle tapped her on the arm, as much artificial sweetness in her tone as a Jenny Craig cookie. "From all that Rhett's said about you, you must have some mighty sharp claws."

Scarlett almost retorted, "Want to test them out?" before clamping down on her tongue. It was really starting to hurt. Settling for only imagining raking her nails across both their smug faces, she hummed a one-note laugh and replied, "Funny but Rhett's never mentioned you at all."

Rhett coughed rather loudly and Belle dropped her aspartame grin. The awkwardness of this unwanted threesome started to itch at Scarlett. She was not basically unkind but her stress and fears allowed no room for charitable thoughts. No tonight. How could she ditch the bombshell bimbo and corner Rhett? She couldn't deliver her sales pitch of seduction and stock options until she'd taken out that piece of trash.

"I think I've died and gone to heaven—or hell if that's where you want me to be, angel." Scarlett had never been so happy in her life to hear another one of Carey Ashburn's cheesy come-ons. He sauntered over to their small circle and flashing his bleached caps, turned to her, "Scarlett-O, who is this goddess beside you?"

Scarlett would have thought that a fame-junkie, peep showgirl like Belle was used to guys hitting on her, and blow them off as easily as she did; especially with her arm hooked through Rhett's. But to her surprise Belle giggled, blushed and quietly told Ashburn her name. He clearly didn't know of her notoriety (not that he would have minded—it would have been "sick") and Belle clearly didn't mind his Mickey Mouse machismo.

The odd couple flirted. Amused and curious Scarlett glanced at Rhett under the guise of sipping her drink. Belle could have been dancing on Carey's lap for all Rhett noticed. He was gazing at her, once again his dark eyes trailing along the sheen skin of her dress. Scarlett's flesh prickled. Whatever his relationship with Belle was, the possessiveness was one-sided. Or maybe no-sided. Maybe she was just an old friend. Scarlett was semi-cultured; she'd seen _My Best Friend's Wedding_.

Belle, almost shyly, asked Rhett if he cared she danced with Ashburn. He raised his head, locking eyes with Scarlett. When he shrugged in reply the two had already twirled into the eddy of bodies. For a long minute, Rhett didn't say anything, just stared. Scarlett sank her nerves into fiddling with her drink. Although buffeted by bar counter wall flowers and a crowd churning to an instrumental cover of— really, _Firework_?—she felt isolated and slightly afraid under his silent scrutiny. She wasn't going to speak first though. It would give him the edge—she'd read about negotiation tactics on Wikipedia only yesterday.

The music shifted to a slower, undulating piece she didn't know and he held out his hand. Finishing the cocktail—the third of the night—she took it. Here goes nothing. She smiled and successfully squelched the urge to run straight for the doors.

His hand covered half of her back, a warm glove on her skin. The other directed her steps. She had never really learned to ballroom dance but her feet were quick and her body moved easily according to his perfect, in-time rhythm. Wordlessly he spun her in silly pirouettes and around the floor. The lack of conversation finally got to her. Screw the Wiki-article.

Forgetting all the clever, not-too-desperate, not-too-mean things she'd practiced saying, she hotly asked, "Surprised to see me?"

He spun her out and back in as a human yo-yo, crashing her into his chest and whispering, "Not exactly."

"Not exactly?" She grumped.

Those three cocktails and all this whirling were making her dizzy. Tipsy even. She was tired of biting her tongue, instead of biting with her words. Why was he acting so…so Rhettish?

"Really you're not surprised to see me?"

No reply. Just a smarmy grimace.

"I'm sorry I should have been more specific—I meant aren't you surprised to see me alive without skin graphs and with all of my limbs intact?"

For a moment he seemed puzzled and then he laughed, head rolling back and squeezing her closer.

"I made sure my smoke alarms were fully functioning before I left. You can't really be mad at me for something as trivial as leaving you in a burning building."

Just watch me! She was about to say just that but then she spotted her mother's wedding dress, hanging in glory on a mannequin off to the side. What was she doing? She needed to woo and schmooze him until he groveled at her feet and begged to give her money. Sharp words could wait. She screwed on a simper and glanced at him through her bristly lashes—hopefully he noticed _her_ lack of clumps.

"Of course I'm still mad. You're going to have to make it up to me, you know."

"Am I? You appear perfectly whole and unharmed. Better even. Maybe I'll leave you inside a burning city next time. I wouldn't bet against you on anything less than a nuclear attack." He abruptly spun her around, catching her back in his arms as her feet tripped over his. "I knew you'd get out of the building even if you had to bulldoze the frail and the elderly on your way out. God help them if they did get in your way."

She ground her teeth, smiling sickly. Remember the smell of dad's office. Remember the noise of the factory. Remember the faces of the workers whose livelihoods depend on this, the thousands more who might be reemployed with an injection of cash flow.

"You could have at least knocked on the bathroom door, Rhett." She strategically dropped her voice so he would have to lean in even closer. "I'd left it unlocked."

"We can always go to my new apartment and do a re-enactment," he grinned and slid the tips of his nails just inside the back of her dress, above her hip. She clenched her stomach—from shock and pleasure. "Or since I own this building we can just go upstairs to the old warden office."

"Uh…" she stammered and looked at the buttons of his dress shirt. She'd expected some, well maybe not repentance from Rhett, but some resistance, some kind of indication that he had left her alone in an inferno over a year ago and they hadn't talked since then. Some brakes on the jump into bed trolley!

"Scarlett, you look good enough to eat," Rhett suddenly growled. "Say the word and I'll steal a chocolate fondue on the way up."

His breath torched her ear, in a good way. His nails grazed upwards underneath the fabric, ending below her shoulder blade. Too many sensations were pelting her—anger, bewilderment and, yes, desire. How could she not remember that night with him right now? She hadn't been with a guy since and third base with Frank did not count. Was it all this twirling? Was it the music or the liquor or the dress? Was it him? Was she seriously thinking about having some sort of conjugal hook-up with Rhett in a refurbished war prison?

"Rhett…"

"Scarlett," he whispered, cutting her off by smooshing her face into his chest.

Suddenly he spun them off the dance floor and into the empty dress alcove. With her vision blocked by his Tom Ford jacket her ears came alive. She realized the sensual, old-fashioned strains of music had burst into a jarring rendition of _We Are Young_. What would they play next? _Gangnum Style_? She preferred mentally listing off the Billboard 100 than thinking about the fact that Rhett's other hand had now dropped to her back and was also weaving along the scooped, loose hem.

"Say the word," he urged, low and sultry. She could barely move with his fingers strumming along her waist. Splashes of hot and cold wherever he touched. Her indecision on what to do stuck in neutral.

"Or…"

His fingers stopped dancing. The heated excitement rising in her belly stalled mid-esophagus. He stepped away and it turned to ice. He shoved his hands into his pant pockets, his expression bland but amused. Where had his hot and heavy death stare gone?

"Or you can just tell me now how much to bid on that stupid dress and stop acting like an idiot."

Stupefied she watched him walk over to her on-display family heirloom and pick up the bid form. He withdrew a pen from his pocket and uncapped it with his teeth.

"So?" He mumbled with the cap still in his mouth. "How much? This is technically breaking the rules but what do I care? This entire asinine auction was for you. Nothing is according to the books."

Her utterly-confused expression didn't waver. Every line of bewilderment etched as Sharpie marks across her skin. What as going on? The auction was for her? He knew she needed a loan? Her brain sputtered over his words. Nothing made sense. She must have misheard him. Or this was a prank.

"Where are the cameras Rhett?" she asked, half expecting some MTV crankster to barge through a wall. "What kind of sick joke is this?"

"Joke?" he replied. The pen cap drooped like a stogie in between his lips and he rolled it with his tongue to the side of his mouth. "This isn't a joke, Scarlett. Not really. I have a much better sense of humor. This is a diversion, but hardly diverting."

Sputter, sputter, sputter. The engine of her understanding wouldn't start. The keys turned in the ignition without a spark. Had it been the third Appletini?

"What?"

"I can't give you the loan from my discretionary or personal funds—I don't have that kind of cash—but as a gift of charity from my company coffers I can. I would invest in the more traditional and probably ethical way if the IRS hadn't frozen most of my assets. Lucky for you, and me, the auditors cleared my charity organizations."

"What?" she said again. It seemed to be the only word she could say.

"Do you honestly think Jonas Wilkerson was the only one on the inside track? If you hadn't hung up on me over a month ago when I'd heard that General Store Capital was putting out feelers to finally levy the kill-shot at your dad's limping enterprise, we could have avoided this mess. I knew before Wilkerson. Half of the brokers in Atlanta knew before that moron. As it is, we're stuck in a grey area. So how much?"

She didn't say what this time. She just stared. Dumbstruck.

He chuckled and shrugged, scribbling onto the form. He closed the pen, dropped it into his inner pocket, and handed her the paper. Before he let go, he dryly drawled, "Of course if you'd prefer to keep treating me like your pimp instead of a potential investor, we can go upstairs. It was almost worth paying for this tacky night to see you in that dress, just imagine what I could get you to do in bed."

Scowling with affront and confusion, an outsider on an inside-prank, she jerked the form away and read the amount, written in bold, slanting letters: $3,000,000.

Holy Mother of Ted Turner! How much had she had to drink? Had somebody slipped in LSD? She blinked several times. Nope. Same amount. Dazed, she looked back at him. He wore a quizzical, mild smirk. Strangely warm and earthy.

"I…I will give you half-ownership."

"What would I do with two manufacturing plants? No thanks."

"I'll…I'll give you some collateral, a lean on the deeds for the plants."

"Tempting, but all the same, no."

"I'll pay you back. Every penny."

"Every penny, plus interest. Off book, too." He scraped his fingers through his hair. "I have no doubt you'll bully or bribe your way to a full recovery, even in this industry and this economy. General Store should have viewed you as an asset and not a liability. Their loss."

"Thank you."

Her voice rang in mystified monotone. The only word in her sobering-up head now, the only question was: Why? Why was he doing this? Why this elaborate auction? Why all this for her? He stood only a few inches away, but something held her back from reaching out to touch him, to hug him. She realized it was _him_. The smile from before—that sunny, lazy one had flickered away. A smooth, distant expression had supplanted it. He could change faster than flipping a hologram picture. A new question popped into her mind: Who? Who was this guy? Friend? Philanthropist?

"It's not as much as you think." He added conversationally, disinterested in the fact he would be spending millions of dollars on a half-century old wedding dress.

She added one more possible 'who' to the list: Closet cross-dresser? He did have style. She pictured him in her mother's dress for a moment and almost missed his next comment.

"You still will only get forty percent of that amount. The rest, plus double that, will go to the charity."

Forty percent? Her math-programmed mind quickly calculated her take away. Her cut would be well over a million. More than enough. She darted her eyes back to the form, treasuring the amount with a visible hunger. This wouldn't just save her. This would exalt her. This was too good to be true. Thunderclap. This _was_ too good to be true.

She flipped her eyes up to his secretive standoffishness. So chill. So mysterious. So Don Draper with a twenty-first century edge. Who was he? She knew. She remembered. A self-acclaimed freakin' spy who'd left her high and dry—or wet really. As if his apartment sprinklers had just helicoptered on again, a cold rain drenched the warm fuzzies expanding in her chest. Her gratitude instantly decayed into outrage. Splotches. Actual Looney Tune-cartoon, angry splotches popped into her vision.

"Do you think I'm one of your life-sized Barbie toys?" She yelled and tossed the paper at his face. "Do you think I'm stupid enough to believe you're just going to give me money from the goodness of your heart? Like you're my personal fairy godmother?"

He didn't react. He didn't refute. He just swiped the paper off the floor and strolled back to the box. Slipping his bid into the slot, Rhett whipped out his cocky smirk and mimicked a husky accent.

"Scarlett, some day, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day—accept this _investment_ as a gift."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"If you need a title for me, I would definitely prefer god_father,_" he drawled, in his normal, buttery bass.

"What?"

"I take it you've never seen Coppola's masterpiece then. I know it's not my Brando."

"What?"

Great. She was on that scratched CD track again.

His smirk broke into a leer and he walked right up in front of her. His eyes smothered her with heat. That punch-drunk tipsiness spiraled around her brain and limbs once more. Her heart rammed into her ribs and some of her anger buckled into lust. Some of the alcohol into sweat.

"It means I'm making you an offer you can't refuse." He pinched her chin and tilted her head up. She was too confused, mad, and dizzy to shirk him off. "It means I want you to owe me a debt."

Scarlett would never be entirely sure what followed that non-sequitur speech. One second she was shoving at Rhett, the next he'd thrown her into the dresses as three burly men in black suits, flashing badges, swarmed him. One of the men crashed into the remaining-upright crystal mannequin above her and she stared as a clear-stone arm with the ripped-off sleeve of her family dress flew through the air and clunked onto her head.

As she conked out—not for the last time that night—she mumbled, "Mammy's going to kill me."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10: Store Scene/Rhett 'chaperoning' her on mill trips.**

_Disclaimer: Still don't own anything GWTW. Still, clearly, obsessed. _

_Note: Flaky? Absolutely. I'll own it, or "Dixie" will. Thanks for those who still read and review. I've found I crave this particular story, this particular escape, most. Especially at the moment.  
_

_Question: Whatever happened to predictability? Answer: It's not everywhere you look._ _(Ages me, perhaps, but gotta love Full House.)_

"I think you're right." Scarlett walked out of the dressing room. Sliding her hands up the teddy-bear soft fabric, she admired how long her legs looked in the skinny black slacks. "I think I will get these ones instead of the dark grey."

"Why not both?"

She froze, her hands perched mid-rub over her hips. Rage flattened her smile and she flipped up her head. What was he doing here?

"Where's Darcy? Where's the sales guy?"

Rhett ignored her.

"Of course, black is black. You never can go wrong with a classic. Grey is a fad."

She ignored him.

"How did you know I was here? Are you stalking me?" She lowered her voice. "Or did those idiots put a tail on me again?"

"It's amazing what a gossipy cat lady and a sweet little sister know about where you spend your days off, especially when you interrupt their afternoon gathering with some chocolate and ice cream."

She clenched her jaw and ground her teeth. Aunt Pitty's and Carreen's scrapbooking parties would have to stop. They forced her out of her apartment every three weeks and now their cutesie-cutting cavorting had permitted Enemy No. 1 to sneak up on her. She smashed her molars into each other.

"Go away, Rhett."

His face melted into mock surprise.

"Done trying on clothes already? Not to brag, but I have been told I know how to dress a woman. Almost as well as I know how to undress her."

Grind. Grind. At this rate she'd wear through her enamel in a matter of minutes.

"Come Scarlett," he gestured to his perfect clothes, "don't you want more of my pearls of fashion wisdom?"

A sneer wrinkled her lips as she ran her snapping eyes up his casual-cool self. He lounged against the entrance to the dressing stalls, arms folded and legs crossed at the ankles, looking like he'd been ripped out of a Ralph Lauren sailing ad and plastered life-size on the wall. Screw it. He could stay here and play model-boy. She would buy her clothes and get out of here. Where had that Darcy kid gone?

"Did you tie the sales guy up? Lock him in a room—"

"Scarlett, honey," the missing Darcy interrupted, walking in—apparently unmaimed—with his arms full of hangers, "those pants look even more fantabulous than the grey ones."

Scarlett contorted her face into what she hoped was a pleasant expression. She watched as Darcy laid his armful on the counter and his eyes on Rhett. The admiring grin of the sales guy popped into an oval.

"Oh. My. Gracious." Darcy turned back to her. He cupped one hand to his mouth, pointing a finger at Rhett through his palm, and whisper-yelled, "Where did you dig up Clark Gable?"

Scarlett had no clue who Clark Gable was. And she didn't care to ask. Darcy buttoned a wink at his new-favorite eye candy and Rhett's red lips twitched. For a second Rhett swiveled his dancing eyes at her—daring her to be jealous. As if! Darcy could have him.

"Name's Rhett," he said, extending his hand. Darcy limply accepted it. All flushed and grinning. Giggling even. Her sales guy was actually giggling.

"You can call me Carole Lombard if it means I can have your number."

Rhett chuckled. No blush. No embarrassment. Acting like he got hit on all the time by men. Scarlett zoomed in on his perfectly-manied nails. Well maybe he did.

"Perhaps another time. I think if I strike out once more with this one," Rhett tilted his head in her direction, "I might consider batting for the other team."

"I don't normally go for switch hitters, but for you Hollywood I will make an exception."

Rhett laughed and Darcy teetered some more. Tapping his fingers in the air, he walked away to a group of new customers. Rhett was throwing her another 'be jealous or be jilted look.' Her eyes quivered as she struggled to resist rolling them. Jealous. That would be the day. She gulped down the malice and took a deep breath. Maybe if she just pretended he wasn't here, he suddenly wouldn't be.

She spun back to her dressing room and slammed the door. Huffing and flaring, she tore the pants off and shimmied into her tight, worn jeans, snatched her purse and crumpled the inside-out slacks into the crook of her elbow. As she slipped on her sandals she noticed Rhett's shoes were loafing outside. New plan. Book it.

Throwing open the door, she pushed past him and bee-lined to the sales counter.

"I'll take these," she demanded, tossing the pants at the stunned sales chick. The girl jumped back. Clicking her fire-engine, nine-inch nails on the fabric, she rumpled her mouth.

"Oh…did, did you want two pairs in black ma'am?"

"What?"

The ditzy sales girl glanced over Scarlett's shoulder. Feeling just as ditzy, Scarlett followed her gaze. Her confusion became irritation. She pursed her lips. Rhett was two feet behind her swinging a bag.

"I got you the grey, too. Darcy was very helpful with your sizes. My memory must not be what it used to be." He spiraled his eyes down her body. "Or you have lost weight."

She pinched her lips until they bled white. Take his peace offering and save some dough or pay for the slacks herself and save her pride? Her hand trembled toward her wallet. Her pragmatism pulled it back. Another long, loud breath.

Scarlett stalked to his side and yanked away the bag.

"This doesn't mean I forgive you."

"I would expect nothing less." A grin oozed over his tan face. "I will never tire of watching you war against something practical like economizing your piggy bank and something intangible like keeping your self-respect. And if you were to begin choosing ridiculous things like morals and values over cold, hard cash, Scarlett, I think you might actually get your wish and never see me again."

She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to tell him to get lost. But she spied his Lamborghini parked right outside the glass doors. His almighty annoyance ran a photo-finish first against the pee-odor miscreants of mass transit.

"Fine! If I can't shake you, then I'm going to make you wish I had." She jammed the bag into his chest. "You're driving me home!"

She marched toward the exit. Rhett trailed a few feet behind. The headlights blinked as he unlocked the car from his key chain and she slipped into the leather seat before he had even opened his door. She leaned back on the head rest and closed her eyes. Counting down from fifty to cool her temper. At twenty five, she tensed when he slid in beside her, but exhaled when the only sound was the rustle of the bags as he tossed them behind him.

In her opinion, the perfect treatment for the both of them was a silent one. It had been her remedy to his constant texts, late-night house arrivals and unannounced visits to her office ever since—but she wouldn't think about the details of that night. The migraines from her head injury had only just stopped a few days ago. No, she wouldn't think about her ruined family heirloom, her severe concussion, waking up in a hospital with her hands cuffed to the bed or how for half a month after the "mistaken arrest" a black SUV had followed her everywhere. Sometimes she almost wished the check hadn't cleared so she could strangle Rhett and end all this stonewalling.

Her cringed-shut eyes started flickering with the crazy-mad tick she now associated with the auction and its aftermath. She commanded herself to just breathe. To stop her lids from wigging out. To get through this first one-on-one with him since the hospital and do her part: pretend to sleep. It worked when he tried to see her at her apartment. Her cool-off countdown recalibrated: this time starting at 150.

The engine revved to life. A sweet growl that roared to a gentle purr as Rhett sped out into the street and onto the highway. It was evening now. Outside the autumn balminess had turned to a damp cool. Inside the breeze of the heater wafted sweetly over her tense face. Soon her fake sleep dozed into real.

She wasn't sure how much time passed. One minute, with the sun burning her eye lids red, she was wishing she had tried on a few tops so Rhett would have picked up the tab on those as well and the next she started awake in near pitch blackness with soft music playing.

"Wh-Where am I?" Disoriented she flailed her arms, making contact with a warm, fleshy sandpaper. She heard a muffled grunt and remembered where she was—at least whose car she was in. She squinted at Rhett in the darkness. He was rubbing his jaw.

"I always thought you could pack a wallop Scarlett, but I think if you chose it, you could have a promising career in women's ultimate fighting."

Blearily she scanned her surroundings. Something was wrong. She could see the stars and not much else. She looked at the clock on the dash. Whoa! That couldn't be right. Two hours? No wonder she felt thatched.

"Is that really the time?" Her muzzy gaze was glued to the green neon numbers. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

"Yes to your first question and I did try for your second. I got drool all over me for my trouble, too."

She heard the smile in his voice and grimaced, mumbling a sheepish apology—somehow more embarrassed because the solid-REM cycle had actually eaten up her protective rage. How was she supposed to act if not annoyed? After everything that had happened between them, she didn't _know_ how to do normal. She didn't know what normal even meant.

The dullness of sleep was fading and she could make out his sharp features. His teeth gleamed white and his eyes glistened black. He'd taken off that preppy v-neck and had unbuttoned the top half of his lime green shirt. Maybe it was the elegant, navy night covering everything or her slap-happy grogginess but out of nowhere her insides started to boil. And not with anger.

Drowsiness always made her more…amorous. She'd learned that the hard way when she would stay out too late on dates—catch her half-asleep and bam, good-bye inhibitions and hello fatigued-friskiness.

Scarlett quickly looked away from the suddenly-tempting Rhett and smeared the heel of her palm across her eyes. He'd already seen her slop saliva all over herself in her sleep; she would shrivel from embarrassment if he noticed her salivating for entirely different reasons.

She surveyed the outside world again to redirect her thoughts. Her vision had fully adjusted to the dark. Weepy, deep-hued trees and the blanket of a pristine October night arched over them. And if she wasn't mistaken, the ground nearby was moving with sparkles and ripples.

"So, where are we exactly?" She relaxed when she heard a perfectly non-panting voice come out of her mouth. "The Everglades?"

"Close. Lake Redwine."

"Oh."

She had heard of it but never visited the lake. It wasn't that far from the city. Still, that didn't explain why they were here. Parked. Engine off. With elevator music as a serenade. One part of her brain thought it was a pretty breathtaking lookout; the other part thought it could have been a filming location for some of the horror films Rhett used to bring by. She chewed on her thumb nail and tried to think of something to say that wouldn't sound like an accusation. She really didn't want to fight.

"So…"

Rhett picked up the thread without missing a stitch.

"I wasn't going to just let my car idle in your neighborhood—my hubs would get lifted before I could say 'titanium.' But while we're on the topic of your, for lack of a better word, _home, _I had hoped last month's generous donation—"

Really? He was going there? Maybe she did want to fight. She cut him off.

"Investment, Rhett. My memory's pretty spotty from that night but I do remember you telling me it was an investment. And I know Pork's cced you on our new earnings forecasts. So don't pretend you're not current on what's happening with your _investment_."

This was the first time they were talking about anything to do with the auction. Not that she had given him a chance. Slamming doors are not exactly textbook openers for serious discussions. She glanced at him. As usual who knew what he was thinking? His mind might be on spelunking in Australia for all she could tell.

"Mea culpa. You are correct." He tapped a finger on his chin. "Semantics aside, I had hoped my money would be enough to move you out of your charming dive. The neighborhood may not be Hell's Kitchen, but it's definitely Hell's slightly less violent breakfast nook."

Scarlett wormed her mouth to the side and snorted in spite of her rising nerves. Not really thinking.

"It's not that bad of an area. Honestly. What's with people? You, Melly, even Ash—"

Her lips froze mid-word. Great. Now she'd stepped in it. Rhett's finger stopped its mini-drum beat. His brows taunted up.

"So you have seen Mr. Wilkes. Does he have enough time for old friends in between his morning show cameos?"

Scarlett thought now as a good a time as any to refurbish her nails. She started furiously scraping off the chipped Razzle-Dazzle pink polish.

"Since you are refusing to answer me, I will have to use my powers of perception to infer that your sudden need to assault your cuticles is a yes. I know I shouldn't be surprised, of course. Why should the great American hero not be exempt from your very loud, very emphatic, oft-repeated insistence—and I quote—that you will never speak to any government rat, devil's spawn spy again—not even if he turned out to be your father."

She stopped her manic manicure and glared at him.

"Don't talk about my father—and where do you get off telling me anything? I can see or not see whoever I want."

"Whomever."

"What?"

"Whomever you want," he blandly explained. "If I'm going to receive a tongue lashing I at least want it in proper English. It gives it something of a naughty Catholic school girl edge, don't you think?"

Her eyes were starting to twitch again. Hello Rhett-induced turrets. With haywire lids she turned back to her fingernails. She envisioned his tanned face as she scratched into her nail polish.

"Now I understand why you don't want to see me. That makes perfect sense. I did save your family business and get you out of jail—"

"And get me into jail!" she yelled, throwing up her hands. "I get knocked on the head by a mannequin in my destroyed family dress—which by the way is the reason my Mammy will hardly even speak to me—wake up handcuffed to a hospital bed and get carted off to some holding cell while guys with bad breath and zero hygiene grill me on what I know about the Asian black market and weapons trafficking!"

"Come on Scarlett, won't it be fun to tell future posterity about your adventures in espionage?"

"I'm not telling our grandkids anything!" she huffed.

"Our grandkids?"

Too late she realized her mistake. His face sparked with something more than just suggestion and for reasons she didn't understand she had to look at her hands. Let the wild mani begin again!

"I'm flattered, but as nontraditional as I am, if I ever do tie the knot, rest assured Scarlett, I'm going to be the one to pop the question. And I won't be getting married for the conventional reasons of better homes and gardens, and health coverage."

Curious she stole a peek at him. He didn't _look_ any different.

"If I marry, it will be because I want something more than that woman's fidelity on the line if she were to stray." His eyes ran down her body, little beads of sweat skittering down her spine. He caught her furtive gaze and leaned in. "I want her money on the line."

He stared for a moment too long before easing back into his seat. Scarlett rolled her head back down. Questions fired off at random in her brain. All smashing and banging into each other at once, leaving nothing salvageable. Was that meant for her? What _was_ that?

"Romantic, Rhett." Her voice cracked. Whoa. When did she become a twelve-year old boy? She cleared her throat. "That'll sweep her off her feet. Or better yet, why don't you bring the lawyer with you when you propose? Nothing says I love you like signing a prenump."

"As it's you who suggested that, I'll take it under consideration."

She shot her eyes back to him but whatever had added that flavor of authenticity to his voice was hidden from his face.

"Now back to the issue at hand, the indomitable Mr. Wilkes."

Her frantic avoidance returned and the nail cleaning sped up.

"It amazes me how teenage fantasies drive the libidos of fully-grown women. Hollywood has tapped that, er, well, as have the major publishing houses. I imagine that even when those underage boys become wrinkly men, soccer moms and coeds alike will still throw their bodies at them."

"I don't need to hear your lectures on—"

"But of course, in your case, your girlhood dream is the boy next door. How…quaint. It almost makes me believe in fairy tales and the Wonder Years and all that mushy crap."

A steel edge sliced into his tone and a steel glint in her eyes. She refused to look at him, buffing her nails with vengeance instead.

"Why do you care?" she muttered. "What's it to you?"

"Friends care about their friends, Scarlett."

"Ha!" She barked and cast him a look that should have withered him into a perfectly-coiffed prune. "Advice on friendship, that's hilarious coming from you."

As usual her comment slid off him like grease on a beef patty. Her stomach growled. She hadn't realized how hungry she was.

"You've been put through the ringer lately. You don't need one more _friend_ complicating your life."

It would have sounded nice, she imagined, had anyone other than Rhett just said that. His sympathy came off more as a sneer.

"You know, Rhett, I think you're just as big of a sap as every other macho guy I've met and all this, " she waved her hand carelessly in his direction, averting her gaze again, "Mr. Cool is a pathetic attempt to hide your jealousy."

"Is that so?"

"Yup. That's so."

"Or, it could just be my insatiable curiosity, and while I won't admit to simple jealousy I will admit to some masculine inclination toward competitiveness driving this line of questioning."

She wanted to ask why he wasn't driving them to a fast food joint but the ring in his voice echoed as a warning bell. Nervously she dug deeper and faster into her polish. Who needed acetone with a…friend…like Rhett?

"I'm sure Mr. Wilkes has his strengths," he continued in that annoyingly silken voice, "everyone has at least one natural talent for something—"

"Yours is to never shut the—"

Flecks of Razzle Dazzle flew into her mouth.

"But I know my strengths as well. And I know that if you could give up this pre-teen obsession with a guy who can't even man up enough to be faithful to his wife—"

"He's never…"

But Scarlett didn't finish. They had shared that kiss. Well, those kisses. The one from his wedding night and the one from only two weeks ago when she first saw him alone. It had been impulsive, chaotic and so messy and hot she still didn't know what to make of it. Except that what she had wanted to feel as so right, had felt so wrong.

Even in the heavy night Rhett noticed her flush.

"To look on a woman is adultery." He smoothly replied, his voice soft as thunder. "And he's done more than just look, Scar, hasn't he?"

He was silent for a minute, setting her further on edge. Her feet weren't just dangling off the cliff. Her entire body was, with her grip slipping every second.

She forced her attention back to the nails, her only distraction from this endless interrogation, glad for the hard-to-scrape glitter. Dig. Dig. Dig. Claw. Claw. Claw.

"While I don't mind what other delusions you have about life or love, I'll admit it _chaffs_ me that you seem to still labor under the impossible idea that Ashley Wilkes is better in bed than me."

Startled her thumb rammed into her cuticle and she drew blood.

"Ouch! Rhett!"

She sucked on the bitter trickle and glared, mumbling with the finger still in between her lips.

"This is your fault, you…you…"

"Yes?" He asked, all toothy and suave.

Oooh. She flicked the finger out of her mouth. Rhett raised his hands in apology. He almost looked sincere. It made her nerves shift into hyperdrive. And at these speeds her anxiety became pure wrath, and apparently her name-calling pure junior high.

"You…you Jack Bauer wanna-be!"

A cricket chirped in that thick pause before his reaction. Snorting so loud it shook the dashboard, Rhett cracked up into low-hyena hysterics.

"I think that's the nicest thing you've ever called me, Scarlett," he said, grinning infectiously. "It almost makes up for ignoring me the last month."

"Oh, shut up," she said without any malice.

She couldn't help but smile a little, suddenly thinking of a different man in her life. The first man and the best man. Her father. Her cuddly, grown-up kid dad who she'd visited earlier today. Her dad who had thought watching '24' was some patriotic duty, who had covered for her when she broke curfew and cried with her when she came in second at her track meets. Her dad who was no longer her dad; just a stooped, crinkly old man who called her Ellen and asked if Maddux was starting for the Braves tonight.

All of the heated annoyance deflated. Pop. Her finger lay forgot as a new sharpness pricked her, in a new place. A surge of sorrow filled the hole in her heart. Without any warning, her eyes misted and a prickle bit at her nose. Memories from her weekly visits flickered in her mind, filmic images steeped in bitter-sweetness. She stifled a sob and whipped her head toward the window. This private pang was not meant for public consumption.

_The hot fluorescent lights and neon white walls of the visitor's room always blinded her, the bright-bleached monotony broken up by orange plastic chairs and bolted down brown tables. A few other visitors and staff members would idle around, playing games or talking in hushed chatter. Her eyes would hop from one forgettable face to the next until they landed on a familiar but faded one. She'd take a deep breath and shuffle toward him, planting herself on the opposite chair at his empty table._

_"Ellen?" _

_ "No, no daddy," she'd say, swallowing down the pain, "it's Scarlett."_

_"Ah Puss, you look more like yer mother each an' every day." He'd pat her hand, seeing past her. "Go get her from outside, will you? I found her gardening gloves in the kitchen." _

_"Daddy…mom..."_

_He'd smile as though his beautiful wife had just walked through the back door and Scarlett could never finish. She'd bite her lip or chew her cheeks to stop the tears. After a minute her father would wave at shadows and flick his gaze to his watchless wrist._

_"The Braves' game should be startin'. Tell me something, is ol' Maddux pitching tonight?"_

_"Daddy Maddux is retired."_

_He'd finally look directly at her, a dash of a twinkle back in his blue eyes. The only reason Scarlett managed to hold it together during these weekly meetings was this one, brief look and the words that followed._

_"Now Katie Scarlett, what is it I'm always telling you about Gregory Maddux? It's not his arm that makes him a great pitcher. It's that thing between both his ears we call a brain." He'd wink conspiratorially. "Puss, you've got a great face between your two ears, but it's what's behind it that'll make you great." _

_The twinkle would fade as confusion replaced it. He'd peer at her as though struggling to remember who she was. A spasm of pain would flash across his withered face, followed by a numbing frisson. The absent grin would return. _

_"Ellen?" _

The mental home video sputtered to an end and Scarlett's eyes swirled with tears. She bit down hard on the hand covering her mouth and prayed Rhett hadn't noticed her momentary personal film fest. Or her tears.

"Scarlett?"

Quickly she blotted dry the tears with the back of her hand but did not face him.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" She sniffled, hoping he thought she had allergies, ignoring that tenderness in his voice.

"For…" His voice dwindled into a sigh.

Something shivered out on the water and drew her eye. It was a beautiful night. The moon shone a brassy gold. The lake sparkled like expensive jewelry. The kind she used to own. The kind her mother used to wear. Reflexively she grabbed her neck and stroked the skin where her mother's gold cross had once hung. She slowly exhaled. She knew the tears were dried up; the weary load and daily grind pulverizing them into forgotten sentimentality. All of a sudden she just wanted to go home—even if it was in Hell's Breakfast Nook—and sleep.

"For what, Rhett?" she asked, turning around. "I'm surprised you even know that phrase exists."

"For this," he answered.

He leaned closer and her heart jolted out of its melancholy beat. His lips clamped over her mouth with a bruising intensity. The soft pressure sent a spike of longing to her core. A briny sweetness coated his tongue and breath. She clasped a hand behind his neck, sinking her fingers into the smooth bristles of hair and skin.

"You don't have to be sorry, Rhett," she gasped, "I want this, too."

He groaned and pulled back, his face alive with an unnamed energy.

"Yes, Scarlett, I do."

Something bit her arm and she looked down, but instead of a spider on her shoulder she saw a syringe in Rhett's hand.

"What…" she whispered, out of breath and groggy. The world was closing to black. "Why…"

_Note: I hadn't realized what a horrible place I'd left this story. But I will finish it. Not with the frequency of before, but eventually. As of now, it's the only one I intend on reposting. _

_Oh, and I wasn't trying to propagate stereotypes with Darcy. I based it on my RL friend. Never shy that guy. Hope I didn't offend. Variations and personality types are ubiquitous and random._

_And, yes the spy stuff will become much clearer in the next chapter. _


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11: The attack and raid (and if you can spot it), the cover-up...**

_Some warning. It's a little disturbing.  
_

_ The clip-cut up before the cold open would be flashbacks to:_

_The 'thief' leaving Scarlett's apartment through the window, with her shooting at him. The agents circling around her at the charity dress auction, followed by her waking up handcuffed to the hospital bed (Yes it is Jeffries). Scarlett noticing something shimmering out on Lake Redwine before Rhett kisses her—and him jabbing her with a needle. _

_Question: Who do you think you're messing with girl? Answer: I thought you made up your mind._

"I could hit that."

"What?"

"Her."

"Her?"

"Yeah."

"No."

"I could."

"Maybe with a bat."

"She's a pretty thing, ain't she?"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Just don't."

"Oh, come on man, loosen up. We've been waitin' in here for over an hour. I could do it right now."

"Doubt even that."

"She's out cold. She won't feel a thing."

"She wouldn't feel a thing if she were awake neither."

"You wanna say that to my face?"

"I'm starin' right at'ya."

A door creaked opened. A hoarse voice barked something in an indistinct slur. The two men grumbled and shuffled away. The door slammed shut, metal clanking against metal. Scarlett blew out her breath and slowly opened her eyes.

The room was black. A tarry dimness blanketed her vision. She couldn't make out anything but the yellow outline of the door. Muffled voices seeped in with the light. A hollow drip-drip of water echoed in her ears.

She knew it was pointless to try to move. She'd woken up about three minutes ago with a slicing headache, a parched mouth covered in duct tape and her hands and feet bound in plastic cuffs around a cold metal chair. She hadn't even twitched an eyelash when an instinct stronger than her initial confusion had cautioned her to stay still and keep pretending to be knocked-out.

Her heart pounded now, with adrenaline and reprieve. She didn't know where she was or what she was doing here. She only knew that she'd just come three seconds too close to being assaulted and that it was Rhett who'd put her here. A visceral hatred spiked up in her gut and she vowed that if she lived through this night she was going to kill him. Her threat made more palatable by the nerve-frying fear seizing up her muscles and stiffening her spine.

The door started to crack open again and she immediately dropped her head. Light bled through her eyelids and she heard several feet scrape along the floor. Their rough footfalls stopped right in front of her.

"She's still unconscious?"

It was the raspy-smoker voice of the man who'd shouted from the door. He had a nasally accent Scarlett had never heard before; a jarring mash-up of Pépé Le Pew and Mr. Miyagi.

"Yeah, don' know what Butler gave her but it did the job."

"A little too well."

Scarlett sensed the skunky-karate master lean closer and wished she'd opted to earn her black belt instead of skipping her martial arts classes to shop for designer belts. The man's rancid breath blasted into her nostrils, his breathing ragged in her ears.

Sweat sprung out of every pore. He was close, much, much too close. Don't move. Don't move. Don't move.

"Hmmm," murmured the man, drawing away from her face.

Her shoulders relaxed a milli-inch. Her pulse slowed a nano-second. It was too much. She heard the swift whoosh in the air before a wet hand smacked her with the force of a piston. Her head whipped to the side and her eyes popped open. The pain stung from her cheek to the back of her neck. A low whistle rang in her left ear. She barely had time to blink before sharp nails dug into her scalp and yanked her head up by the roots of her hair. She cried out, her scream gurgling wordlessly into the tape.

The door had been left partially open, a cone of light spreading into the room. An ugly man with almond-shaped eyes and loose skin sneered down at her.

"Maybe next time, sweetheart, you will think twice before you try to fool me."

He pulled hard on her hair as he released her, flinging her head back. Scarlett grunted, tears of pain leaking out the corners of her eyes and trickling into her ears. An icy horror shot through her limbs and into the tips of her fingers and toes. Her entire body ached with the cold fear.

This couldn't be happening. Not to her.

Her heart was slamming against her ribs. The terror of this moment, of this unreal reality, barreled faster and faster through her blood. Her body was going into a living rigueur. The shock, the fear and the desperation careened, suddenly colliding and in one, long breath, it all oozed out of her.

This wouldn't happen. Not to her.

Reaching deep to a place she didn't even know existed, she grappled for courage and found it. Somehow she found it, hard as clay and strong as wood. Her eyes narrowed. Her heart calmed and she rolled her head forward.

Her sharp gaze darted all around. Rusty pipes snaked along the concrete ceiling and walls. No windows. No vents. No escape. She was enclosed in a block of cement.

She turned her eyes to the men in the room. Two big thugs stood a few feet away, hunkering behind the one who'd slapped her. She glared at him and started to fight against the cords and yell into the tape.

"Now, that's more like what we've come to expect from you Ms. O'Hara," croaked the man. He grinned, revealing a mess of yellow teeth, and snapped his fingers. "Sherman get the tape. I forgot something in the other room."

The nasty-mouthed ringleader spun around and walked toward the only exit. One of the bulky shadows moved, lumbering toward her. Scarlett stopped struggling, panting through her nose. The guy crouched down and the light hit his face. Shock slammed into Scarlett.

It was Rhett.

Disguised in a blond wig and an auburn beard, dressed in tattered jeans and a flannel shirt she knew he'd never be caught dead in. Well that was a good sign. Clearly he thought _he_ was getting out of here alive. Her relief at seeing him ate up most of her anger.

He placed his large hand over her thigh and squeezed gently, trying to convey something with his eyes. She stared dumbstruck at him for a second before nodding infinitesimally. He winked and ripped the tape off her mouth.

The glue tore off a layer of skin. Hairs on her upper-lip she hadn't even known needed waxing uprooted and she exhaled a guttural groan. More stinging tears dripped down her face. Warm fingers squeezed her thigh again. Rhett stood and walked back to his place in the shadows. Even his gait was different, clunky and heavy.

That's when it finally clicked. Rhett was a spy. He was a full-on spy. And now their lives depended on his ability to act and her ability to keep her mouth shut. If their performance bombed, bad reviews would be the least of their worries. Who cared about the art beat? All she could think about were the obituaries.

"You shoulda told me you wanted a piece of her," complained the other man to Rhett when he'd waddled up beside him. "I woulda let you have her after. I ain't the jealous type, bro."

Rhett turned his head but didn't answer.

"I saw you cop a feel when you were over there, Sherman." The pervert jabbed a thumb in her direction. "So look, if we get a shot at her again, I've got your back if you've got mine."

Scarlett used to think the movies exaggerated how fast some people could move. Nope. Some people moved faster. Her gasp was lost in the sounds of the bullet-fast scuffle. Rhett had the guy crushed up against the wall by his throat, his feet dangling an inch off the ground.

"If you look at her again, I'm going to snap your neck."

The man was choking, his eyes bulging. Rhett pinned him harder into the cement.

"I am the jealous type, bro"

Rhett's natural drawl slipped out, textured with a sinister edge. He dropped his hand and the man slumped to the floor, coughing and holding his neck. He scrambled to his feet as Rhett eased back into his at-rest pose, feet set apart and hands folded in front.

"You're crazy!" yelped the man, hacking out a stream of profanities. He limped back alongside Rhett. "Insane!"

Again Rhett didn't respond but just looked at the guy. Their seething slash laconic impasse ended with the entrance of a few more men—the snaggle-toothed slapper and a couple henchmen, judging by the size and stature of them.

One of them held a suitcase and the other was dragging in a rickety table and chair. Scarlett's eye was drawn to the flash of silver as the suitcase lid yawned open. Rows of sharp, silver objects glinted in the dank room. A sickening tug wrenched at her stomach.

"No need to concern yourself with those, Ms. O'Hara," said the now familiar crackly voice.

She flipped her head toward it. The man was standing right in front of her again, Rhett and his partner lurking in toe.

"Unless of course you prove uncooperative."

He smiled, that oily, chipped leer and she lost it.

"Let me go! Let me go! I don't know who you are and I don't want to know. Let me go or—"

"You are in no position to make threats," he interrupted, tilting his head to the side. "Although I do like your—what do you Americans call it—your spunk?"

He waved his hand and yelled something in another language. One of his lackeys brought him the chair and handed him a flat-screen that looked like a suped-up iPad. The burly gopher stepped back to fiddle with the hellish dental tools. Scarlett tried not to look at them.

The slap-happy boss—she wasn't too afraid to notice the obvious hierarchy—sat down, scooting his chair forward. His knees brushed against hers and she flinched back.

"Do you believe in coincidence?" he asked, ignoring her reaction and looking down. He tapped his finger on the screen and his face glowed bright with a techno-blue. "Or maybe you would call it fate or destiny?"

He glanced up at her, banally curious. She glared. She was not about to get low and dirty about religion with this nut job.

"What do you want? Let me go. "

He smirked, lowering his gaze back to his screen. "Perhaps you are too young to know what you believe Ms. O'Hara. Perhaps your parents did not instruct you before they…became expired."

The way he rolled his greasy tongue over that word rolled a shiver down her back. How much did this guy know about her? She flicked her eyes to the flannel-clad, deadpan Rhett. Had he told these people everything he knew about her? Why was she trusting him now? She knew. The have-nots don't even _have_ choices. And she was their new queen.

"My mother was a spiritual woman," her interrogator droned on, sliding his finger back and forth over his screen, his black eyes scanning things Scarlett could not see. "She believed that our lives are written in the skies, a single thread in the great tapestry of the universe. The pattern already set and the design already woven. My father did not share her faith. He was a man of reason, a man of science. He believed a rational explanation existed for everything. He did not believe in coincidence but in probability."

He stopped scrolling. An almost soft look melted some of the hardness in his ugly face.

"You are magnificent," he cooed, gravel in his throat. "Quite extraordinary really."

"You're delusional if you think…"

He flipped the tablet over and raised it in front of her eyes.

Scarlett's sneer trailed off into silence. A bucket of fear poured over her. Her lips started to tremble. Her limbs started to shake. She was staring at a picture of herself. In bed. With Rhett.

She glanced up at the real thing. Nothing but Lumberjack Joe's stonewall expression. Drenched in panic, she sunk her eyes back down to the stolen digital memento from her life. The 'boss' swirled his finger. That memory was not the only one they'd captured.

Snapshot after snapshot of her life: waitressing at Cracker Barrel, lounging on the couch with Carreen, bargain shopping at the grocery store, taking a jog, cooking dinner with Mammy or visiting the factories flashed before her, and to her horror the last contraband image to pixelize onto the screen—her kiss two weeks ago with Ashley.

"Now I am a man much like my father," rasped the boss-interrogator. "And despite what Mr. Butler has been assuring us for months, I cannot believe that by fate or chance you are both the lover to our mole in the CIA and mistress to the mole they attempted to have infiltrate our network without being an agent yourself."

Scarlett looked at him speechless, her quivering mouth a round O. He swiveled the screen back around and set it on his lap.

"So I am going to ask you again, Ms. O'Hara. Do you believe in coincidence?"

All the air zapped out of her lungs. Out of the room. Was any of this true? She chanced a peek at Rhett. Still Mr. Impassive. One thing was certain. This much was true. She _wasn't _a spy.

"I…I…" She licked her lips. "I'm just a girl.

Her interrogator pursed his mouth and dropped his eyes to the screen. It had returned to the first photo; the grainy image of her most intimate moment with Rhett.

"Whatever you are Ms. O'Hara you are not a girl."

Maybe it was the slimy-Jack Nicholson way he smiled down at the picture. Or the disturbing, cerulean glint in his mad-villain eyes. Whatever it was, it riled Scarlett up. Some of her flippant bravery sparked back to life.

"I don't care what you think, you dirty pervert," she yelled, veins punching out of her neck. "You've been stalking me for how long and you still think I'm some government agent? Did you miss the whole arrest fiasco? Where was your filthy paparazzi crew when that went down?"

"You were arrested by the FBI because, quite accurately, Mr. Butler is under investigation for treason. We have the CIA to thank for extricating one of our most valuable assets from that sticky affair, as well as yourself." He clicked his tongue three times and stood up. "Pity interagency cooperation is not more improved or you might have been spared your night in lock-up Ms. O'Hara. Or you might not have. The agency did pull your strings as well."

"They tracked me after I was arrested," she blurted out, not sure what to believe anymore.

"Well as I said interagency cooperation is not what it should be. Old feuds die hard."

He chuckled and turned away, moving away to the table with the metal fangs. He picked one up and twirled it in between his thumb and finger. Scarlett's insides crusted up again with icy trepidation.

She looked at Rhett. He had turned toward the door. When was he going to bust out one of those ninja moves again? Any minute would be great.

"You are doing remarkably well, Ms. O'Hara. Quite the charming ignoramus."

Scarlett shot her eyes back to the lone talker. He spun the jagged tool, watching it dance through his fingers. An eerie ecstasy, like messed up clown paint, splashed over his face.

"I almost believe you are a very unlucky young woman." Each syllable dropped with exaggerated perfection. He tossed the knife-like instrument in the air and snatched it with the other hand. "Almost."

He looked at her. Her stomach clenched.

"Malheuresement ma peche your puzzling existence is a nuisance I am unwilling to leave to an _almost_."

Bam. Several things happened at once. Scarlett screamed Rhett, Rhett yelled something, and the demented dentist-inquisitor dropped to the floor. A loud, whizzing noise started whining. The other men jiggered and jutted around the room, lost in confusion. Scarlett thrashed about her bolted-down chair as white smoke filled the air.

Choking and gagging on the noxious fumes she thought she would have preferred the bleeding to suffocation. Her eyes burned, tears sizzling on the edges of her lids. Suddenly a blurry figure approached her and she felt the whisper of a knife on her skin as the cords were sliced in half. A plastic mask wrapped around her nose and mouth.

"Breathe into that Scarlett," whispered Rhett, yanking her off the chair and throwing her over his back.

She yelped from being treated unceremoniously like a gym bag, her brief yap muted into her oxygen face-mask. She gulped in the wonderful, sweet air. Rhett's arms were cinched around her abdomen and she bounced out of her smoky prison.

The room she entered glared brightly with fluorescent lights and dirty saw dust. Old chairs and tables, rusted filing cabinets and chipped cupboards were thrown helter-skelter all over the place. It all started to spin. Round and round. A swirl-art machine of colors.

The combination of the blood gushing to her upside down head and the blast of oxygen was overloading her brain. She kicked her legs to wriggle out of Rhett's arms. She was not going to black out again!

Rhett had other plans. At first she thought he'd smacked her on her butt and then she realized—no it felt more like a bite. She tore off her mask and started bellowing curse words that would have made her dad wink and her mom cringe.

With her lights flickering off she watched as a stream of men in bullet-proof vests and helmets rained down from nowhere. She recognized one of them as the putz Jenkins who'd arrested her. Flinging one last almighty kick, hoping to eliminate Rhett's chances at reproduction, she angrily passed out. Again.

* * *

A booming bass drummed against her brain. Her head started to rock to the beat. Her foot started to tap and her hand started to twitch. It took Scarlett a few seconds to realize: A: She had no clue where the music was coming from. B: Part of the pounding was a massive, cluster headache. And C: Her eyes were closed.

Painfully she lifted her lids and squinted into a red-glowing room. She zoomed up to a sitting position, blinking away the black spots and pressing her palm against her temple. Where in the name of Lady Gaga was she?

Four walls of the gaudiest, most hideous decorations. A smattering of furniture designed by the spawn of Betsy Johnson and Elvis—Vegas Elvis. Maroon lights with dangles of beads on the shades. Turquoise cushions and sequenced picture frames. Seriously. Where was she?

An unseen doorknob clicked. A door she had mistaken for a mere poster of Madonna during the Vogue years opened. She caught a flash of disco, strobe lights before the closing door shut out the party scene.

Rhett—the real Rhett—leaned against the enlarged Material Girl, his face framed by her silver cones. Lipstick was smudged on his collar and his shirt was untucked. It was the same outfit from earlier today—if it was still today. His mouth flipped down and his eyebrow arched up.

"You've had a rotten night, haven't you?"

Scarlett didn't know how to respond. Her exhaustion had entirely digested her rage. She figured it would give her some mental indigestion. Right now she didn't care. She only wanted to say one thing.

"Explain. Now. No bull. No lies."

Rhett dragged his hand through his hair and sighed. He swaggered over to her—he never could walk without some kind of Saturday Night strut—and slumped down beside her on the kitsch-in-a-kit futon. His tired eyes ran up and down her.

"You must be hungry." He pointed behind her. "That food's for you."

She glowered but glanced behind at a large paper bag. Suddenly the scent of melted cheese and delicious grease filled her nostrils. She snatched at the bag and dug inside, stuffing fries into her mouth at ravenous speeds as she unwrapped the burger.

"You haven't answered me," she said, spewing flecks of food everywhere and not even caring. She tore her incisors into the fluffy bun and juicy patty. Ahh. Eating could be as good as—she eyed Rhett—as anything.

"There's a drink at your feet—two in fact. A coke and a water. You should drink both. You're dehydrated. The drugs will do that to you."

Her wolfish attack on her meal slowed. Her eyes thinned into slits.

"You have two seconds to start explaining or so help me Rhett, I will…" She couldn't think of anything bad enough. He supplied the threat.

"Kill me with your bare hands, dice me into tiny pieces and feed me to one of Aunt Pitty's cats?"

"Worse. I'll feed you to Aunt Pitty—and in that shirt you were wearing tonight."

He coughed to cover his laugh.

"Last night, actually Scarlett," he corrected, clearing his throat and his face smoothing into some of the kindest lines she had ever seen. "It was last night, or technically, very early this morning."

She swallowed her last bite of burger and dusted the salt off her hands, never breaking his unreadable gaze. Clearly he needed some prodding. What she wouldn't give for one of those big, old, cattle ones right about now.

"Are you CIA or are you a criminal?"

He looked down at his hands, tapping the tips of his fingers together. No answer.

"Was that Jeffries—the FBI agent who interrogated me for like five hours—that I saw before you drugged me?"

More tapping. No answer. Yup. A nice, long metal prod would be ideal.

"Who was the psychopath that tried to kill me tonight—that you kidnapped me for—that you let smack me—"

Rhett whipped his head around and shot his arm out. Scarlett recoiled and flung her arms up over head. Her shield reflexives were still on high-alert.

"Scarlett, put your arms down."

For the first time tonight—or today—or whatever time it was—Rhett sounded mad.

Slowly she lowered her protective pose. Here eyes were wide. Her head throbbed from the fast movement and rush of adrenaline. Rhett's mouth was wrinkled in a disgruntled frown. Without saying another word, he lifted both hands, placing one on her shoulder and the other gently against her cheek. Although his touch was soft, she grimaced at the pain.

"I'm sorry I couldn't stop him then." His voice slipped out as a whisper. His fingers brushed lightly along her bruised jaw. Those dark eyes locked with hers. "I can't explain everything Scarlett. I can't explain anything. Not yet."

She didn't know why but suddenly she only wanted one thing from Rhett. And it wasn't an explanation. Her green eyes shimmered strangely in the reddish gleam. Her head still rocked to the music. Her throat still shrunk with thirst.

"Where are we?" she asked.

Rhett's hand caressed her jaw, trembling.

"A strip club. A safe house."

Scarlett accepted this news in silence. Poof! Like a bunny had just popped out of a hat. Suddenly her surroundings magically made sense. She inhaled. Her expression warmed. Her body relaxed.

"So, we're alone? Actually alone?"

He slid his other hand into her hair, watching the dark chestnut wrap around his fingers. He wasn't paying attention to the subtle shift in her angle, in her mood.

"Yes."

She leaned towards him, floating her lips alongside his ear.

"If you stick me with a needle again, I'll eat you myself."

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye and smirked. Reliable, unemotional Rhett. Nothing ever got to him.

If Scarlett could have seen his face when she started kissing his neck, she would have known how wrong she was.

_Note- I thought I would divulge more but it just didn't fit. Still, there are some clues. And well, hopefully, some clarification. Thanks for the reviews. Now the next chapter...I've been wanting to do that one for awhile. I think you can guess which it is. Cheers to those who've stuck with me. This chapter wasn't easy to write, especially in consideration of some recent news here in the States, but I wanted to show Scarlett coming through and not losing her 'spunk.' Survivors are as survivors do. _


	12. Chapter 12

_Note: Sorry friends for confusing you. I have called these vignettes but I've realized they're closer to episodes. This is GWTW, WB/Alias style. With that in mind, I'm starting a "Previously on Girl's World" preface before each 'episode.' I hope these word-scene montages will help to clarify and connect things. I added one for last chapter.  
_

_Now, for this chapter's the "Previously on Girl's World" 30-second refresher course:_

_Rhett getting a text the night of their first hook-up. The creepy interrogator flashing Scarlett the stolen pics and telling her that Rhett is his syndicate's mole in the CIA, under investigation by the FBI, and Ashley was the failed CIA plant (Do Scarlett—and you—believe this?). Incognito Rhett getting her out and stabbing her one more time with a syringe. Scarlett waking up in the seedy establishment and telling Rhett she'd eat him herself if he sticks her again as she starts to kiss him. _

_One more thing, I usually write with music or the TV on. The song that pops up on Pandora often sways the story (e.g. In one of my stories I had Scarlett burn down her mansion, "Set Fire to the Rain" and "Rolling in the Deep" had just played). The question/answer from last chapter was a line from a White Stripes song—the song I imagined playing when she wakes up…fading for a bit and then playing loudly as she makes her move on Rhett. This one, yeah, I had on Kelly Clarkson._

_Pardon the long note. Thanks for the reviews. Shout out to Ondine and Gbella for their prods.  
_

_Question: Whatever doesn't kill you makes you…? Answer: Crazier. _

"Hey watch where you're running lady!"

"Sorry!" panted Scarlett, leaping over a mess of tangled dog leashes that snaked over the jogging trail. She glanced back at the frazzled boy walking five Purebreeds—two Great Danes thrown in the mix—and winked. The kid blushed and she laughed, adjusting her ear buds. In seconds she'd left the canine club and him in the dust.

Things were going amazingly well—an asterisk or two required. The factories were producing. The stocks were rising. Her boobs had plumped back up nicely since their weight-loss reduction. (Why did those always have to be the first things to go when she lost a few pounds?) And she hadn't had a run-in with so much as a security guard since that action-movie nightmare a month ago with Rhett.

Rhett. Another good thing in her life. She didn't' know what to call him—boyfriend seemed too much and friend seemed too little. She heard a yelp and a loud bark and flicked her gaze back to the skinny tween with his hands full. Dog. That's what Rhett was like—a pet.

She snickered and started gagging. That's right. The asterisk. Or one of them. The roadblock in her happy trail on this warm December day—her stomach. For the third day in a row she felt sick.

Fighting through the sloshing, she finished her morning jog, running a personal best she hadn't hit in months. For her victory cool down lap she puked up all of the granola and Greek yogurt, not to mention last night's chimichanga.

She swiped the acidic goo off her lips and stepped away from the puddle of yuck, avoiding the brambles from the dying, dried-up blackberry plants. With a sickening certainty that had nothing to do with the gross mess at her sneakers she knew a pharmacy run was a top-priority errand this morning. And it wasn't to pick up the tampons she should need right about now.

Kicking up her heels and ignoring the jilting nausea in her gut she hoped she had nothing to tell Rhett on their date tonight. He'd been out of town doing who knew what for weeks. They'd talked or texted almost every day—but she hadn't laid eyes on him since that James Bond weekend. The weekend that had started with a bang and ended with a proposition.

_"Scarlett," Rhett groaned. _

_"Hmm?" she murmured, slipping her hands underneath his shirt. Whoa. Hello washboard. Where could she insert the quarters? _

_"Let's…"_

_She pulled away and looked at him, bobbing her head to the side. Her palms were still pressed against his hot, hard obliques. Her lips throbbed from their assault on his stubbly jaw line. Her headache was slowly shrinking from the rise in her libido. _

_"Let's what Rhett?"_

_He stared at her with tired, eager eyes. _

_"Let's—"_

_"Do this?" she asked, with sly smile, scooting on top of him. "Because whatever you're going to say I don't care. I'm alive, Rhett, and I want to feel it." _

_She bent her head and started tugging off his shirt. Instantly his hands clamped down on her wrists and she swiveled her glossy gaze up._

_"What? You've grown a conscience?" _

_"No." _

_She rolled her eyes and wriggled her wrists free, starting to yank off her own shirt. What did it matter where she was? Her life wasn't private—it'd been ripped away and ripped apart, the sordid, sacred pieces up for grabs to anyone with a third-grader knowledge of the internet. Who knew but that her last several months had been bid on and bought—digitized into a favorite viewing collection for an entire demographic of sicko consumers. Her arms were crisscrossed in her sleeves when Rhett put an end to her sudden striptease. His voice was blunt. _

_"You're going to stop that unless you want Belle to walk into her staff room and ask you to fill out a W-2 form."_

_Belle. That harmless name put the kibosh on Scarlett's desperate seduction. And for all intents and purposes, she cracked—screaming and kicking and cursing like toddler on a juice box of steroids. Rhett grabbed her by the arm, propelled her out the room, down a pulsating hallway, and through an alley door, shoving her directly into his Lamborghini. _

_With the street lights dimming and the sun rising he tore out into the deserted streets and in a hoarse staccato clipped, "Do you think I enjoy this? Do you think I like constantly lying to you? Do you think I would have drugged and dragged you there last night if I had any other choice?" His hand clenched the steering wheel and his voice dropped. "Do you know what it was like when right after we'd finally—that wasn't the first time I've seen that photo Scarlett. They sent me the entire video before you'd even gotten out of bed."_

_"Video?" she croaked._

_"Don't worry." He glanced her way, his black eyes sharp as talons. "It burned." _

_Picture-perfect the smoke-filled stairwells and strident orange flames of Rhett's smoldering apartment building flickered in her mind. _

_"Oh," she rasped, wishing she'd had the sense to grab those drinks so she wouldn't sound like a chain-smoking frog. _

_Rhett suddenly leaned over her, steering the car with knees, and rummaged around her feet. When he popped back up he threw an Evian at her._

_"Thanks."_

_"Yeah."_

_He squinted back into the topaz dawn. Silent. Pin-drop silent. For minutes he didn't say another word. Scarlett guzzled down the bottle in seconds flat and tapped the empty container against her leg to break up the awkward no-talk zone._

_She realized he wasn't taking her home when he jerked the car to the right and swerved into the valet-packed drive of the most drop-dead gorgeous hotel in Atlanta. _

_"Why are we at the St. Regis?"_

_ "Because it's where I told Carreen I'd be whisking you away to for a romantic weekend when I crashed her scrapbooking party and debugged your apartment."_

_Scarlett's exhausted brain jammed with the overload of information he'd just spilled in his casual, iced-tea southern drawl._

_"What?" _

_"I didn't want to bring you to Belle's strip club, but you weren't waking up and I had to be there and be seen."_

_"What?" This sounded familiar. Hadn't they played this one-question game already?_

_ He—almost—smirked his lazy half-grin. Almost. Keeping his enigmatic eyes locked on her face he reached over and clicked open the door. He left himself arched over her, his arm nearly grazing her chest. _

_"There's a spa package included with the room. It's under the name of Blanche Dubois."_

_"Blanche Dubois? Who's that?" _

_He licked his lips and Scarlett bit her cheeks. It'd gotten hot and humid all of a sudden. _

_"She's you." _

_"Me?"_

_His eyes blinked down her body and back up to her face. He lounged back, retracting his tanned arm. This time his infamous floppy smile fully wrinkled his mouth. _

_"Better get going. Knowing you, you'll want to raid the fridge first."_

_"Aren't you…"_

_"Well?" He seemed impatient to drive off. _

_"Aren't you going to come up?" she whispered, mindful of the pot-marked valet eavesdropping beside the ajar door. _

_Rhett raised his eyebrows. She didn't care. Her slanted gaze traced the thigh muscles pushing against his thin fabric, the shape of his strong arms and the rugged shadows on his face. She tilted her chin and swallowed. _

_"I don't want to be alone today Rhett."_

_And she wasn't. _

**********************AGW**********************

Glistening with sweat and gurgling with nausea, Scarlett stuck the key in her apartment door, jiggling it until it snapped unlocked. She had the paper bag from the pharmacy tucked under her elbow as she spun around into her living room, nearly colliding with Frank and Suellen.

"Oh, hey," she said, ignoring her sister's screech and the fiancés dufus apology. She'd heard their bickering through the thin wooden door and wanted to rush out of the room before they somehow managed to involve her in their pathetic lover's spat. It usually had to do with—

"Don't you hey me! You killed Frank this morning!"

Scarlett paused but didn't turn around, snagging an apple off the dining table and kicking her sneakers haphazardly against the two by two entryway.

"It's a game Sue. He's still alive—"

"Well you as good as killed him in real life! What use is he to me if he can't—"

Scarlett slammed the bathroom door, muffling her sister's rant on how she'd ruined her life and destroyed her chances at winning. The two nerds were gamers. Big ones. Checking her teeth for any leftovers in the mirror she wondered if Suellen would be less mad about learning she had kissed Frank in real life than she would be if Scarlett the avatar ever kissed Frank in Second Life.

No flecks in her gums. She puffed out her cheeks and sighed. Pulling out the cardboard box and unwrapping the crinkle, her palms grew clammy. She slid the frightening white stick out of its package. A rubber ball thudded into her gut. She gulped. Yup. She'd rather go find out how her little witch of a sister would react to the news of Frank's infidelity than find out what this little witch of a stick had to tell.

**********************AGW**********************

Three tests, three water bottles and three hours later Scarlett, still decked out in rumpled, dirty running shorts, rode the elevator up to Rhett's new apartment. She tapped her fingers on the wall and paced around the tiny space. The claustrophobic doors flew open and she flew out, stalking straight into the private penthouse.

It was the first time she'd been to this apartment but it sparkled and gleamed with all the lackluster modernity of his now charred bachelor paradise. Uber sleek. Uber impersonal. Uber Rhett. Speaking of—where was he?

"I'll be out in a sec, Scarlett," he hollered on cue from a different room. "Will you key in the lock on the pad? It's 1936."

Agitated she pinged and ponged her eyes around the wall near the elevator before spotting the key pad. She rammed the buttons in, attacking each digit with wrath.

"You're early."

She spun around. Rhett loped toward her with a towel around his torso. His face was veiled by another one mussing his hair. Her green eyes sparked. Not with lust.

"No I'm late."

"Weren't we going to meet up at—"

"I'm pregnant genius."

His hands stopped their wicking-motion and he dragged the towel slowly down his face. She missed his speedy-search of her mood as she tromped down the steps and into his pristine-platinum living room. It was too clean when she was such a mess. She wanted to dirty the place up, shred his stack of SI in the corner and sprinkle it all over the floor.

She glared at Rhett—she should throw some mulch on him in the process. Why'd he have to stand there all drippy and ripped? He stared back at her, slicking droplets off his arms and nonchalantly sliding down into a recliner.

"Who's the lucky father?"

Low. Pond-scum low. She should have known. Her hands trembled at her sides, her elbows stiff with rage. She had wanted to do this better but her words just spit out of her mouth.

"No one's going to be the father. There isn't going to be anything. I just came to tell you—I thought you should know you have defective materials. With the way you go at it you could become a licensed sperm bank."

His jaw clamped down and flexed. Good. He should have to take a jagged little pill of sarcasm every now and again. He shoved enough down her throat. Cold smugness rippled over her body and she fell back into the couch. His hard stare was starting to unnerve her.

"What? No comeback? No Dr. Rhett advice?"

"It's your decision."

Her brows dipped down in disbelief. Really? That was it?

"You're—"

"I guess you're finally ready to shake off the last shackles of your youth, Scarlett. Congratulations. Who needs a pope telling her what to do with her own body?"

She turned away so he couldn't see how effective his blow had been. She'd been battling herself for the last two hours—fighting against what she wanted to do and what her mother would want her to do. What Mammy would want her to do. She was battered but, as usual, her will had come out on top. A little worse for the wear but still kicking. Still winning. She didn't need Rhett socking her right in her guilt-stricken wound.

She closed her eyes, breathed out and whipped her head to him.

"What's it to you? You don't believe in God."

"No, but you do."

"I don't know what I believe."

"Don't pretend to be agnostic Scarlett—it's almost more annoying to me when believers claim to be agnostic than when atheists fake their uncertainty." He twirled the smaller damp towel around his wrist. "Believe. Don't believe. What do I care? You, you believe in something or you wouldn't look like a shoplifter who'd just been caught with ink on her new jeans."

"That's…"

"What?"

"You're way off the mark."

Of course. He wasn't. When it came to her inner-most thoughts he was a perfect marksman. How did he do it? How did he peel her down to her soft, gooey core without breaking a sweat? And why was he looking at her like that? She nearly flipped her head around to see if his worst enemy lurked behind the couch.

She needed to say something to wipe away that creepy-bland scowl.

"You know, I'm not doing this just for me. I'm doing this for you." She shook her head and folded her arms. Her eyes wandered over the kid un-friendly room. "You don't want a baby."

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

The zip of cotton fibers snagging apart broke the uncomfortable quiet. Confused she turned to Rhett. He now fiddled with two towels instead of one. The proof of his power was bizarrely hot—and disconcerting. His weird behavior was making her forget her own angsty anxiety.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Why?" he replied, focusing on folding the mangled cloth.

"Why what?"

"Why are you—does it have anything to do with money?" He darted his eyes up, keeping his head down. "If you need money…"

Money? He thought this was about money?

"No—I mean, sure, money does help, would help. Raising kids isn't cheap. But I…I don't even have health insurance."

His eyes rolled down and he nodded. She gawked at him. What was with him? Rhett—man of mystery, destroyer of towels—seemed almost hurt. He balled his bits of cotton and fast-pitched them into the corner. That inscrutable pain cleared from his expression. He gazed poker-faced at her.

"I do, bytheway."

"Do what?"

"I want kids. I always have."

Scarlett didn't like this shift. It felt…grapple, grapple, grapple for that SAT word…paradigm. She had no idea where he was going with this. From experience she knew this was when he was at his most dangerous.

Keep it simple. Keep it clueless. She narrowed in on the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated. Keep it un-romantic.

"Most guys retire their bachelor jerseys and sign up with a wife before jumping into the kid arena Rhett. Don't be a Brett Favre and say you're done when you're not."

She smiled ruefully, knowing how proud her dad would have been with that analogy. Score. Her mental end zone dance was premature.

"Couldn't have said it better myself Scarlett. Point well taken."

"What point?"

Without any explanation he stood up and walked away. She blinked in bewilderment. He flipped a light on in one of the back rooms and disappeared. Was he getting dressed? He reemerged half a minute later, still clad in his terry-cloth kilt, and holding a small black box.

He tossed it at her and she barely snatched it with the tips of her fingers. It couldn't be what she thought it was.

"Open it," he carelessly commanded, slouching back into his recliner and placing his feet up on his coffee table—intentionally or unintentionally flashing her.

She swirled her dumbstruck green eyes to the box in her quaking hand and gaped blankly at it.

"Open it," he ordered, a little less indifferently.

"No."

"Now."

She jerked her head.

"No."

Why did he have this? He shouldn't have this. Rhett wasn't just a bachelor. He was _the_ bachelor. She wouldn't be surprised if ABC owed him royalties for their reality show. So why did he have a ring box from Tiffany's?

It wasn't that she hadn't grown to like Rhett. In fact—her eyes cut a quick ogle of his abs—some parts of him she'd never disliked. But did she even know him enough to like him? To love him? This was too much. Too soon. Too fast. And there was still that other asterisks—Ashley.

Some stubborn piece of her soul just wouldn't give him up. Couldn't give him up. No matter how much he'd already given up on her. On them. He was one of the last links to her old self. To her young, unorphaned, unjaded self. Her eyes softened with the memory, her face infused with the hope of the ignorant and untried.

She lifted her hand to return the box to its owner but her fingers bumped into cotton. Her neck craned up. When had Rhett moved in front of her?

"Scarlett O'Hara, you're an idiot."

He grabbed the box and tossed it across the room. Dropping to both knees he seized her hands and forced them against her stomach.

"Rhett! What do you think you're—"

"Marry me. Have this baby and marry me." His deep eyes bounced around her shocked face. His easy drawl was ragged. "I know I don't have the right to ask, but I'm here. Right now. Asking it. Marry me and have our baby."

Before she had the chance to respond Rhett had her pinned against the couch cushions. His mouth bruised her lips. His hands trembled down her shoulders. His kiss, this kiss, hurt. It healed. Their bodies blended, his damp skin warming her bare arms and legs. The touch stung with a sweet prickle. She gasped for breath and his dark face swayed before her spinning vision.

"Marry me."

"Okay."

It was barely a whisper.

_Note: Maybe I should give a key? SI is Sports Illustrated. I made a mistake in the last chapter and should have written Jenkins instead of whatever else I put. Favre retired and unretired multiple times from the NFL. SAT is an American College entrance exam. And Scarlett getting pregnant before the marriage was the only way I could imagine Rhett actually popping the question. He wasn't a marrying man in the 19__th__ century, he wouldn't be one today. And neither would Scarlett. Was it clearer or more confusing? _


	13. Chapter 13

(Unlucky) Chapter 13

_Previously on A Girl's World:_

_Ashley's CNN-reported return. The picture of her kissing Mr. Wilkes. The flashes of smoke and FBI agents as Rhett leaves with Scarlett after her interrogation. Rhett telling Scarlett he hates lying to her while driving in his car. Rhett asking Scarlett to marry him and have his baby. Scarlett whispering okay. _

_Question: Do old spies ever die? Answer: No, they simply fade away. And then come back to haunt you.  
_

"What is this? An intervention?"

Scarlett panned her eyes along the motley group—Mammy's scowl, Melanie's blush, Suellen's sneer (what was she doing here anyways?), and at last at Ashley, who wouldn't even look at her.

"Scarlett."

Melanie stepped forward, screwing her porcelain face into a painful grimace. The glassy skin about to break.

"It's not that we don't like Rhett. I mean—goodness, didn't I ever tell you how he sent me a dozen roses after I'd just had Beau? And bought me a dozen boxes of diapers and wipes? But well, it's just that—"

"He's as slimy as a salamander dipped in frying oil."

Scarlett wound her arms so tightly against her chest she was sure she'd pop the buttons of her cardigan right off. The pearly orbs dug into her flesh and she dug into the fight.

"Mammy—"

"And if you marry him, you'll be just as slimy. No matter how many spa treatments or facelifts he buys for you, you'll be a greasy, no-good hustler. A panhandler wearing Prada, but a panhandler through and through!"

Scarlett glared at Mammy but didn't say a word. Rage severed her tongue. Rage, and the distant, grey eyes that had just turned on her. Steel knives in her gut.

"Mrs. Robillard…I think that we should not over—"

"Why are you here Suellen?"

Scarlett cut off Melanie's diplomatic attempt. She didn't need some peacemaking patronizer right now. She needed to vent and sister Sue would have to do. She'd always been her target as children—well, as children and as adults. Somehow it didn't matter how old she became. When Suellen and she were in the same room they timewarped back to their tween selves—Scarlett fourteen and Suellen twelve.

Her sister threw her a mean look—worthy of any reality TV show villain.

"I live here, don't I?"

"Not last time I checked. You spend more time with your card-carrying AARP fiancé than here. And what have you ever contributed to pay the rent? In fact, after today you can go pack your bags. I'm done supporting a freeloader." She glanced coldly at Mammy. "Panhandlers don't make a reliable wage. Keeping on a squatter is a risk I'm unwilling to take."

"You can't kick me out a month before my wedding!"

Suellen hiccuped madly over the last word. A incandescent light bulb dinged on in Scarlett's mind.

"It's because I'm getting married before you now, isn't it?"

Suellen's thin mouth sucked into her face. A mummy with clumpy mascara and an ombre gone bad. A mummy who was just about ready to unravel. Scarlett smirked. Suellen unwound.

"You couldn't let me have this one thing—this one thing! It was supposed to be my time! Not yours!" She flicked her mad eyes at Mammy. They gleamed brightly. "But no you had to go and get yourself knocked up!"

Scarlett's smirk didn't just fall off her face—it crashed somewhere down around her ankles. Her lungs started flapping. Her blood started spiraling. The green eyes skipped and skidded over each shocked face. She hadn't told anyone about her pregnancy. And she definitely hadn't told—

"You're pregnant?"

Scarlett had been cringing, prepping for the blow to come from the stunned Mammy. She hadn't anticipated the hushed voice of Ashley. Her stomach hardened. Half of it rose up her esophagus. She turned to him. His expression made her want to evaporate.

"You're pregnant Scarlett?" he repeated.

"Yes."

"And Butler's the father?"

"Yes."

Those grey eyes gave her nothing. Without another word, he faced the window. The late January light bled over his pale face, melting his golden hair to silver. A shiver passed through Scarlett. Taking a deep breath, she looked at Mammy. For the first time, in a long time, her grandmother wore a smile for her instead of a frown. It was a small, sad smile.

Mammy didn't break her soft gaze. Walking over to Scarlett, she rested her weathered palm against the flushed cheek of her granddaughter.

"If you want to marry Mr. Butler, you can and with my blessing. But just know, you don't need to. We can take care of that child." An amber relief spilled into Scarlett's soul. She tilted her face into the warm hand. "Don't make this blessing into a mistake, that's followed by another mistake."

The wise eyes crinkled and the young ones closed. Mammy kissed Scarlett's forehead and shuffled away, grabbing the mollified Suellen by the elbow and asking her if she wanted to make fun of the contestants on _What Not to Wear_ with her.

Scarlett watched. Deflated and detached. The glow from Mammy's words already cold. She hadn't expected that. It didn't change much, lightening the lead in her feet into iron at best. Unknowingly she dragged her hand across her belly. Had she changed the lives of her parents this much too?

Melanie came at her from nowhere, hugging her with the force of a freakishly strong bird.

"Oh! Scarlett I'm just so happy for you," she cried, her voice gagging on Scarlett's hair. "You're going to be a great mom."

She slid her hands down Scarlett's arms and clasped her piano fingers around Scarlett's wrists. Her girlish soprano started humming out an endless melody of questions. They swirled around Scarlett's head. Dizzily she answered in mechanical monotone, only too aware of Ashley's back and hidden face.

"How far along are you?"

"I don't know. Eight, maybe nine weeks."

"Have you been sick?"

"I was for the first couple weeks, but no, not really anymore."

"Lucky. But I always knew you'd be one of those women. Are you going to take the midwife route or see an OBG?"

"Ummm."

"Are you taking your prenatals?"

"Yup. Rhett bought me a year's supply of gummy ones."

"About Rhett, Scarlett—"

"It doesn't matter."

"I just didn't want you jumping head first into anything." Melanie bit her lip and twisted her fingers. " So…will, will you try and go natural or do you think you'll want an epidural?"

"I…I don't see the point in feeling pain if I can avoid it." Inadvertently Scarlett snuck a peek at Ashley. "Then again maybe I am a masochist."

"Well you do whatever you want! And that goes for everything. Are you going to wait until the baby's born to find out if it's a boy or a girl or do you want to know at your 20-week ultrasound?"

"I haven't really…"

"It's too bad I just gave away all of Beau's old things." The baby-hungry joy dimmed a little on the heart-shaped face. Melanie winced as she darted her eyes to her husband. "His swing was brand new—he never liked it much. Not even as a newborn."

Scarlett nodded. Liquid satisfaction roiled around a more solid sensation of guilt. Mel didn't need to say more. She'd confessed to Scarlett only two weeks ago that the doctors had told her she had too high a risk for stroke if she got pregnant again. Ashley had gotten a vasectomy the day after, informing his wife of his procedure post-op.

Scarlett sighed, picking up the carry-on roller at her feet. The things people kept from this woman would fill up the Ramblin' Wreck. She sighed again.

"Well, I better go."

"Sure." Melanie's Colgate commercial smile flashed on again. "I'm so excited! You'll let me throw the baby shower?"

"Course. Who else?"

Melanie wrapped her in another bearish bird hug and Scarlett almost enjoyed it. With blinders on she walked to the door. Her hand trembled when it rested on the knob. Her bushy lids dropped. This was it. Her bags were packed. She was ready to go. One. Two. Three.

Scarlett glanced up. Melanie bobbed excitedly. In the background, Ashley stood still.

"I'll text you when I land in Vegas Mel."

She was out the door, hurtling down the stairs when a firm hand gripped her arm. She stopped. The icy metal of his ring stung her flesh.

"Scarlett, wait."

She elbowed out of his hold and spun around. Her back smacked into the stairwell wall and her heart smacked into her ribs. This is what she had been hoping for. This is what she had been dreading.

Ashley leaned closer, placing his hands on either side of her. For a wild instant she thought he was going to kiss her—and without her initiating it. But the marble fire in his eyes faded. His hot breath cooled to a lukewarm breeze—like he'd just popped a breath mint behind his teeth. Scarlett's shoulders slumped and her spine relaxed.

"What? I have a plane to catch."

He pulled away but didn't drop his arms, caging her in—with his body and his fleckless gaze.

"Mammy just gave you all the out you'll ever need. You don't need to marry him."

"Yes. I do."

"Because he's rich?"

"Because he's the father!"

"Yeah, a father for eight or nine weeks. The timing just fits." Ashley spat a pretty duo of expletives out the side of his mouth and snorted. "How could you let him touch you after he kidnapped you?"

Scarlett tensed. Her mouth sizzled dry.

"How…how…"

"How do I know? Because I was there—I saw him carting you off on his back. Even with that Barney wig on."

"But I thought—I thought you didn't work—and aren't you CIA?"

"The FBI asked me to come in and ID the perps because they can't even ID their own people unless they're wearing big yellow letters that say F-B-I."

Scarlett was too twisted up and worried to laugh at his lame joke.

"Ashley—why you?"

"Because the other American—your fiancé—who could recognize the actual members of this Southeast Asian crime syndicate also does all their dirty work."

"Rhett isn't—he saved me."

"Yes and remind me why you needed saving in the first place? Because he drugged you and took you to his partner—not his boss Scarlett. His partner. It was Butler's choice to take you there. Just like it was Butler's choice to get his partner out of there before he saved even you."

Boom. His words rocked her reality.

"I don't believe it. I can't."

"What? You're going to marry him out of some twisted sense of gratitude? Whatever debt you owe him for your life has been paid in full. Trust me. I know."

"What do you mean?"

"Has Butler told you anything?"

"Enough."

Her voice shook with the lie. Her gut gnashed on itself.

"He didn't even tell you that he saved me?" Ashley asked, doubtful. "That he's the reason I escaped?"

Another boom. For so many months she'd been tiptoeing through a landmine. Now everywhere she stepped tripped a wire.

"Rhett—he saved you?"

Ashley licked his lips and searched her face.

"Butler gave me the cover I needed—and the papers to make my way out of North Korea."

Ashley inched closer. He smelled like home. Her knees almost buckled from the sudden nostalgia.

"Am I grateful Scarlett? Of course. But do I trust him? No. Not after what I've seen him do. Not even after he got me out of hell."

Gulp. She'd never seen Ashley look so—alive. It sparked something to life in her. Her desire. Her hope. Her love for him. Things sinking to the rear of her consciousness, almost dormant. Now a ticking bomb ready to erupt. A ticking time bomb that had just gone off.

"Why are you telling me all this now? Why not before? Why not when you got back?"

Ashley's grey eyes wandered down to her belly. She followed his gaze. She hadn't realized she was clutching it. His warm fingers scraped against her knuckles.

"Don't marry him Scarlett. For your baby. For me. For us. If I've ever meant anything to you. Don't. It'll rip me up knowing how he'll hurt you."

All around Scarlett invisible fireworks burst. A real-pyrotechnic show. Ashley loved her! She brushed her hand along his sleeve.

Abruptly he pushed back and jammed his hands into his pockets. In the time it took to say player the drowsy disinterest had resurfaced on his tired face.

Scarlett fidgeted and fumbled with the handle to her suitcase. What was she supposed to do now? She smeared the sweat off the back of her neck. Her entire body ached with fatigue and fear. And disappointment. In herself. In Ashley. In Rhett.

The emerald engagement ring glinted on her other hand and she rubbed her cheek. The hairline fracture in her jaw had long ago healed but it seemed to re-crack at her light touch. Had Rhett brought her to that place, to that psychopath, on his own command? Had he actually saved that guy too? She looked at the ring—the perfect fit, the perfect size, the perfect ring.

"I have to trust him Ashley. What other choice do I have?"

"Not to trust him." She flipped her head up, wanting to see more in that familiar face than resignation. Her hand itched to slap it. To caress it. He had broken the rules. He wasn't supposed to show that he still cared. He wasn't supposed to care. She clenched her fists.

Ashley raised his eye brows, staring at her white-knuckles.

"You know Scarlett, to Butler's credit his superiors in the CIA think he's their man. That his loyalties are to his country. Something to think about." He turned on the landing and tapped his fingers on the banister, a phantom grin on his mouth. "But can you forget what the devil looks like just because he lets you out of hell?"

Ashley drummed his fingers one more time. A last, distant beat of her surrender. A surrender he hadn't even known he'd won. He was the perfect fit, the perfect size, the perfect dream. Waving a white flag, Scarlett watched him sprint up to her apartment. To Melanie.

She bent down to scoop up her suitcase, wishing she could scoop up the mental debris from this last explosive half hour. Knowing whatever stability she had thought she'd found was shattered at her feet.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She slid down the wall and waited for Rhett to come inside.

The conversation was short and painful. Rhett jeered and joked. She steamed and sidestepped. She didn't notice his pain. And he wouldn't see hers.

As he left, some of that bravado wavered. He turned her ring over in his palm. His drawl echoed with emptiness.

"I'm still going to pay for everything—all your check-ups, all the diapers and diaper rash cream—everything."

"No, Rhett." Her gaze drifted above his head. She couldn't look at him. Too afraid she'd backtrack. "I'll manage. It's what I do."

"Scarlett." She lowered her eyes, unable to resist that hypnotic note in his voice. "I'm going to pay for everything."

It wasn't a request. His black eyes bathed her in an emotion she was too tired to understand. A deep breath caught in her throat and she exhaled. Slowly she nodded.

"Thank you, Rhett."

Before she had the chance to blink, he was gone.

The swinging door started to blur, dissolving into watercolor streaks. Tears filled up her vision and dripped down her face. She dropped her head between her knees. Feeling like no one had ever understood her—except maybe the man who had just walked away. A man she couldn't trust.

She bit into her arm to muffle the sobs. Ashley was still upstairs but he couldn't comfort her. A rattling breath staggered out of her lips. His wife would do that. Scarlett didn't get the irony. She never had.

_Key: AARP is an organization/lobby for retired persons in the US. Ombre is a two-toned hair style, dark on top and light at tips. What Not to Wear is a reality show where stylists give people with bad styles make-overs. Ramblin' Wreck is Georgia Tech's football stadium (recall that's where I had Scarlett attend college, before she was forced to drop out). Barney as in Barney Rubble. __Also, my family and friends have only ever been in the CIA (or early versions of it). The "Agency's" disdain for the "Bureau" is almost as deeply engrained as its hatred for enemy spies. No joke. I'm sure it's the same with MI5 and MI6?_

_Wrote the end of this chapter to 'Mad World,' love Adam Lambert's cover. Original '82 song still great. _

___Thanks for the reviews. Please be patient. I promise things are going to get worse before they get better._ Also, this will be the last update for awhile. Probably until after July 4th, which fits, since that chapter's going to have fireworks. Real ones. It'll be a big jump in the storyline but a resolution of 80% of the spy stuff.  


_For crossover fans, I will update Rosier one time more before I hit the road. _


	14. Chapter 14

_I was supposed to finish my next "Rosier" chapter but after a list of questions from Lawdy, I realized I needed to put this scene next, as opposed to the fun and tricky one I would like to write (AKA the volatile, questionable-consent scene). So I wrote this short chapter. I'll post the chapter for my P&P story in the next day or so. I have to since I'm leaving …I really won't post anything again for AGW until after July 4__th__. Sorry Rosier/AGW fans. You won't be left hanging too much longer with D&E. _

_And you know, if you have questions like Lawdy, feel free to PM me. I try to answer questions via PM but am not always the best. So for instance if you want to know how Suellen knew Scarlett was pregnant, I will answer that I put that brief scene with Frank and Suellen in the chapter before last so that you might infer sister Sue did some scouring when Scarlett spent so much time in the bathroom, and was not above digging through the bathroom trash, to locate the pregnancy test underneath a pile of wadded up toilet paper. _

_Previously on A Girl's World:_

_Scarlett warning Brent to keep his paws off her sister, just before he ships out for duty. Her hanging out with her high school buds (Tony, Stu, Brent, etc.). Scarlett calling off her engagement to Rhett. _

_Question: Do you want to be inspired? Answer: Go ask your grandparents about their lives. _

"Ready… Aim…"

It was a muggy, slate-skied day in June. Scarlett stood, with a bone-sawing pain in her lower back and her water-swollen toes jutting out of her black strappy sandals. One arm was flung over her enormous belly, the other around her sister.

With each rifle shot, Carreen shook with a fresh, silent sob. Scarlett stroked her sister's back, watching the grey gun smoke blend in with the grey clouds. Shock and disbelief were painted on every face—every familiar, worn-out face from her youth. The Wilkes' ash-colored irises and honey-soaked hair, the sallow cheeks of the newlywed Kennedys, the obsidian curls of the Fontaines, the ebony satin of Pork and his family, Mammy and Sam, and of course, the doused fire-red hair and bleak blue eyes of the Tarletons. Other family and friends—the Hamiltons, the Calverts, the Munroes—hovered, sullen and lost, in the background.

Everyone howled or sniffled, cried or trembled. But not Scarlett. Her green eyes burned from their lack of tears. She flicked them to Stu. India Wilkes had her skeleton frame pressed against his side, her wet cheek smashed into his suit jacket. From the look on Stu's face, he didn't notice. His laughing eyes shimmered with ghosts. Scarlett doubted they would ever laugh again.

The last shot blasted into the air. At last, a hot tear streaked down Scarlett's sweaty, limp face.

* * *

"Scarlett, come. Sit." Mrs. Tarleton patted the half-taken couch cushion next to her. "Your belly look's like a bullfrog ready to belch."

"No—there isn't room. I'm fine standing."

"Nonsense." She jumped up and scowled, grabbing Scarlett by the arm and wrenching her onto the couch. "I just lost a son, not a leg."

Her petite frame belied her scrappy strength. Scarlett wobbled into the cushions, nearly elbowing Grandma Fontaine in the face. The wrinkly lady glared, her wild, bushy eyebrows spiking down. Scarlett, quietly and quickly trying to appease the annoyed cantankerous crackpot at her side, turned back to Mrs. Tarleton.

"You didn't need to—"

"You're the one about ready to have—what are you having anyways?"

"A girl." Scarlett flashed a forced smile, uncomfortable on multiple levels now. "Or that's what they told me."

Mrs. T—as Scarlett had called her since she was five years old—sized her up. Those sharp eyes— sparkling neon-bright against her red-rimmed, bloodshot whites—whipped around Scarlett's plumped up face and pop-over figure. She scratched her mane of candy red hair.

"If you were my patient, I'd guess a foal, from how low you're carrying."

Mrs. T was a veterinarian. She related every human tendency or trait to one from the animal kingdom. Scarlett could only nod at being told she could possibly be carrying a horse. Part of her believed it. She was either having a hoofed creature, or a baby Rockette. Every night her ribs endured an enthusiastic kickline-bruising.

A waiter swirled by with a tray of crab cakes, and Mrs. T snatched three off the platter, shooing him away into the eddy of funeral guests when he offered her some more. She bit into the crumbly pastry, flecks of shellfish and flour sprayed Scarlett's black empire-waist dress.

Scarlett shifted and arched her back, or tried to. Sitting on this hammock disguised as a sofa was worse than standing. Of course the couch wouldn't' be so bad if the crypt keeper's wife wasn't snuffing against her neck and Mrs. T raining her snack down on her dress. A heavier downpour fell on Scarlett when Mrs. T opened her mouth to speak.

"I still can't believe Car-Car is having herself a baby—and solo, too." More yellow-pink polka dots splattered Scarlett's knee. "Wish Brent had known you were expecting before he died. He woulda made you an honest woman."

"Honest woman, Beatrice?" Grandma Fontaine huffed in Scarlett's ear—which was burning three degrees too warm. She definitely did not like the direction of this conversation. The old lady clicked her tongue and jammed a veiny thumb in Scarlett's face. "She wasn't an honest girl. The grief she gave poor Ellen."

Another tongue-cluck. Scarlett really didn't like this tangent.

"I still can't believe your grandma's letting you get off the hook. I'd have you down the aisle with a shot gun to your back—that daddy must be the biggest dead beat of all."

Scarlett scowled. What did this woman know? Not Rhett.

After a cool month post-'break-up' he'd revved up the friendship thing—or father thing, really. Politely asking to come to the ultrasound, calling after each doctor's appointment, purchasing her every amenity known to womankind for a baby or a pregnant lady—and as recent as two weeks ago—cosigning his name on her condo's deed and helping Mammy and Carreen find a rental closer to their old neighborhood, to this neighborhood. The two now lived about a block away in the Snowbird MacIntosh's home.

Grandma Fontaine's hen-like tongue clicked again and Scarlett bit her cheeks. Seriously the lady knew nothing.

"Oh, I know all about the father, little Miss Priss. What—you think I can't read the social column? That baby's daddy is that grease ball Butler. I'm sure he's a right old Sugar Daddy. And what do they call someone like you? A Baby Mama or something?"

Scarlett's eyebrows quivered. Born and bred in the South, she had been drilled to respect her elders, but she wouldn't sit here as dumb as a doormat and let Grandma Fontaine wipe her bunioned feet all over her.

"That's not—"

"It's not what?"

Mrs. T interrupted their unfriendly banter with a sigh, "Course even a sweetheart like your sister, Scarlett, wouldn't have just turned her boyfriend over to you. No one's that generous."

Apparently Mrs. T had ignored Grandma Fontaine's comments. Her blue gaze floated over the sea of guests to Carreen, whose solitary, slight figure leaned up against a faraway wall.

"You know, he was planning on proposing when he got home from this rotation. Almost did it over Skype."

Instantly Mrs. T's eyes started glossing over with tears. Scarlett swallowed. Her annoyance forgot. She'd never been comfortable comforting others. She hadn't known what she'd wanted from people when her own mother had died; she was even more clueless what to say to a woman she considered a second-mom about her son's death. Out of nowhere, Grandma Fontaine's beaky elbow pierced Scarlett's side.

"Ouch!"

"Do something. Gripe about your cankles or something."

"Uh…" Scarlett grimaced, rubbing her ribs. She peeked at Grandma Fontaine. Had all of her snide remarks been meant for a higher purpose? "Uh…Mrs. T…did…did you get bad leg pain when you were pregnant?"

Mrs. T glanced a tear away from her freckled cheek and sniffed. An appreciative, faraway smile warmed over her pale face.

"Leg pain. Back pain. Scalp pain." She sniffed again. "You name it—I felt it—especially with the twins. Those boys were as rowdy inside the womb as they were outside the womb. Who ever heard of a lady my size carrying twins full-term? But they came out on their due date, wrestling and writhing."

She looked away from Careen and back at Scarlett.

"I don't know what Stu's going to do. You know, that's what tears me up the most. I still feel like I have at least half of my boy, like maybe that's why God sent me two of them, but Stu…He's lost half of himself."

Scarlett opened her mouth, struck by the sadness in those sapphire eyes. The baby inside her wriggled, an alien limb bulging out of her dress. The sensation was still as foreign as it was surreal. And although the tiny foot or elbow was now lodged painfully against her bones, it sent a wave of relief through Scarlett. If her baby could injure her, she was alive and well. But Mrs. T's baby boy was not. What would she want to hear if she had lost her child?

Never before had she so wished she had Carreen's faith or her Mammy's prayers. The bleakness washed over Scarlett and she closed her mouth. Nothing she could say could make this mother's hurt subside.

"We'll all miss him, Beatrice," came the raspy, hard voice of Grandma Fontaine. "That's for sure. But he died a soldier and a fighter. I remember when I was only eight years old and we lost every boy in our neighborhood on Omaha Beach. Every last boy, Beatrice. There weren't a mama or sister or papa that didn't wander around our block with dead, dazed looks on their faces. It was hard times. My mama lost her only son—just like I done lost one of my boys in Vietnam. And don't be holding your breath for something to ease that ache. It don't ever go away. But we move on. We live on. Not most of us get to hug our sons again like John Wilkes did when Ashley done come home from prison. Still can't believe that golden boy got out of an enemy prison."

Scarlett twitched—automatically on edge. She tried to tune out the droning tell-all of the old hag. Think of Mrs. T. Think of Brent. The rusty windbag's just saying this to get Mrs. T's mind off her loss. Scarlett's words of affirmation worked, sort of.

"Just goes to show you that if a pretty daisy like him comes home," continued the shriveled lady, "and a real man like Brent didn't—it just wasn't in his cards. God must have needed your son on the other side."

Mrs. T swiped her face, smearing away the sorrow with another faint smile. Scarlett blew out her hot breath and smiled in return. It was a fake grin, but a grin. Mrs. T didn't care.

"Thanks," she said, leaning over and clasping Grandma Fontaine's and Scarlett's hands. "Both of you. I…I better go and see if Stu's come back from the graveside yet. He can't stay out there all day. He…he at least needs some lemonade."

"Make it hard," winked Grandma Fontaine.

Mrs. T laughed softly and squeezed their hands again before swaying away into the mass of people. Grandma Fontaine mumbled something and rested her head against the back of the couch, closing her eyes. Seizing the moment, Scarlett started to excuse herself. She'd barely extricated her lumpy body from the lumpy sofa when her narrow exit was blocked by a floppy, mismatched-sock of a man—well, technically a man.

"Wow, Scarlett," Charles Hamilton gulped, grinning and panting. His face the color of his sock (the maroon one). "I think you still look great. I mean—not that you didn't ever not look great. But you know, you…you…can hardly tell you're pregnant. I mean—not that you look like you're fat…It's terrible what happened to Brent. Tell, uh, tell Carreen my…I send…"

"Boy what's the matter with you?" cut in Grandma Fontaine. "Your Uncle Henry told me you lost your stutter."

Charles gulped again and his bovine-eyes shook with embarrassment. He would have felt better had he known Scarlett hadn't heard a word of what he had said, or what Grandma Fontaine had either. From Charles' word 'go,' Scarlett's attention had been monopolized by the horrifying recollection of how for two terrifying weeks she had thought this Sheldon with copper curls had impregnated her. What would she have done if this Big Bang brainiac was the father of her child? What would she have done with a kid at seventeen? Become an MTV Teen Mom star?

The baby-monster inside of her flipped sideways, plunging what Scarlett could only assume was a poker into her bladder. She lurched up—she needed a toilet, and since she couldn't have a shot of Bourbon, a slice of peach cobbler.

"I'm sorry," she lied, already hustling toward the bathroom. "It…it was good to see both of you."

She swerved past the drunken frat-pack of her and Brent's youth, padded her Mammy on the back and gave a nod to Carreen, before waddling into the Tarleton's downstairs bathroom. The door still bore the marks of the raucous twins and their siblings. Black scuff marks dirtied the white paint. The simple sight of the wear and tear of a home lived-in drove memories—as smells and sensations—through her brain and down her body.

Pushing in the dented lock, Scarlett finally collapsed in tears and grief. Brent was gone. He was really gone.

_Key: Rockette's are the famous NY kickline dancers. Sheldon is a nerdy, know-it-all character on the American TV show the Big Bang. History? Omaha Beach was a landing place for Allied troops when they stormed Normandy (D-Day) during WWII. _

_If I had been thinking, I would have posted this for Memorial Day. Thanks to those who serve. _


	15. Chapter 15

_Chapter 15: It Happened One Night AKA Ashley's Party and Rhett's After-Party (Part 1)_

_Previously on "A Girl's World":_

_Scarlett yelling at Ashley for breaking up with her, at age 16. Ashley telling Scarlett to end her engagement to Rhett, for him and for her baby. Scarlett falling down and crying in the Tarleton's bathroom at Brent's funeral._

_Question: Where do all roads lead? Answer: Home (Sorry, not Rome.)_

"I know you're there, Scarlett."

She paused and bit her lip, one hand on the door and the other curling up to her face.

"I can go back inside," she said.

Ashley turned his head, locking eyes with her for the first time in—Scarlett didn't know how long. He smiled. It was warm and lazy. She sighed. Not a sigh of longing, but of release.

"Can you?" he said, tilting his head in invitation and scooting over to make room for her on the porch step, "Mel needs someone to keep me company while she sets up the grand finale and I have a feeling that that someone is you."

Scarlett's eyes split wide in surprise. She glanced back into the house. Her gaze bounced along the party crowd and landed on Melanie. The hostess was busy at work. Nothing new there. Scarlett shook her head and stepped out onto the porch.

The screen door swung shut behind her. The squeaky hinges sung with a familiar melody; a song of summer nights and twilight dinners. She walked over to Ashley and sat down, ignoring the cool, damp of the wood. The green sequences on her cocktail dress glinted with the orange glow of the few lanterns whose flames had withstood the thundershower. She inhaled the piney, smoky scent. The night teemed with life, with memories.

"So how long have you known about her surprise gift?" she asked.

"Long enough to act surprised, instead of embarrassed."

Ashley winked and Scarlett laughed.

"A video montage," he scoffed. "Why did I ever show her how to work iMovie?"

"Well don't let Mel know. She's been collecting pictures and videos of you since the big announcement about—"

"I'm a good actor, Scarlett," he interrupted. "You know that best of all."

Ashley's smile slipped off his face. Scarlett's laughter slipped away. He stared at her a moment before swiveling his gaze back into the royal blue night. Mimicking Ashley, she squinted into the buzzing backyard. Birds whistled and insects chirped, the moon shone and the clouds scudded away. But the night wasn't warm. And as usual, Scarlett knew she wasn't seeing the same scene as Ashley.

"So…" she began, wanting to fill the noisy void.

"Three years next week," he said quietly. "Three years since he died."

Scarlett hesitated. The breeze blew colder against her bare arms. Ashley flicked his granite eyes to her. The smile that spread over his lips did not spread to his eyes. The look was as cold as the air. It weighted her down, settling stone-like in her gut.

She wanted to go back inside. She wanted to rewind back to the beginning.

"Can you believe that the last time I saw Brent alive was at that big donor party my dad threw at our house? That was a night, wasn't it? I found out I'd made it through the CIA's screening process. I learned I'd be heading to the Farm—the training facility soon. I met…" Ashley shot her another quick eye flick. "You broke up with me that night, do you remember? Knocked my dad's dog's statue and me onto the floor, too."

Scarlett wanted to protest and set the record straight, but the objection floundered on her tongue. Ashley lifted his hand and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. His eyes traced over and through her. He dropped his hand but not his eyes. Not the subject.

"Do you ever want to go back?" he asked.

This was the first and probably last time that she knew exactly what Ashley Wilkes was thinking. Still, she lied.

"Go back where? To what?"

He wasn't fooled. He smirked and looked back into the humming dark.

"That night, that night of the fundraiser, Brent and Stu were standing next to me when you walked in on your dad's arm. You were sixteen and even then you had this way about you. Every guy in that place…well, let's just say it was a good thing you came with your dad."

Scarlett leaned in. She couldn't help it. His voice vibrated with the same nostalgia as the rhythm of this cool night.

"You were so full of…life," he continued. "We all were. We were young and nothing could touch us. None of us had ever known anything bad, not really. Apart from the Calverts, none of us even had to deal with divorced parents. Money was at our fingertips, security at our backs. Love was tucked away in backseats and secret hideouts. Our teachers praised us. Our parents loved us. Our peers envied us. It was a dream, waking up every day was a dream."

Ashley's low words sunk deep, to a place she'd forgotten. To a place she'd made herself forget. She was back home, with Brent and Stu lounging on her sofa playing video games and her mom coming in to bring them a snack. She was with Ashley, taking a spin in his new convertible—a high school graduation present. She was free and happy, and completely clueless.

"I like these days better," she lied, again. "I can do what I want and buy whatever I want. Who wants to be a teenager forever?"

Her voice cracked. The fireflies floating against the dusky sky blurred. She couldn't tell the difference between them and the stars. Her forgotten past had turned into a song; in the heat of this cold moon, in this hush after a rain storm, in her shared history with this man at her side. And suddenly she couldn't stop the tears from falling.

Ashley folded her into his arms.

"You're right, Scarlett. We can walk into bars without fake I.D.'s and watch any movie at the theater. But we don't sleep. We don't dream." His breath was hot against her scalp. His arms were soft. "We don't live."

She cried as he held her. And somehow she knew he was right. How long had it been since she'd felt anything but worry? Dreamt of anything but grocery lists and financial reports? Lived instead of survived? Was her life as dead as Brent's?

Wait.

When did she become so philosophical? She needed to stop watching late-night infomercials of self-help gurus when she couldn't sleep. It was making her sound like Carreen—deep-thinking- do-gooder-lost in some South American village building houses-Carreen.

Scarlett breathed into Ashley's shirt to clear her mind. It smelled of starch and cologne. His hand stroked her back. His mouth brushed against her forehead. She waited for that tingle of desire, that rush of longing.

Zero. Zilch. Nada.

A lightning bolt clapped loudly in her brain. Scarlett stiffened. Her head snapped up.

Ashley looked at her. His eyes wavered in the flickering lanterns' light, two pools of silver. She blinked back. Shocked. The hand on her back wasn't sending tremors down her spine. The lips on her forehead hadn't spiked a fever. The man before her wasn't anything but…a friend. A friend!

Had it always been this way? When had she stopped loving him? Had she ever loved him? Something about Brent's death had killed something in their friendship, or maybe stripped it back down to just friendship. Brent's ending somehow giving Ashley and her a new beginning. Or was it something else, something additional? She knew things had changed between them since Bonnie was born, since Bonnie's existence was announced really, but _everything_ in Scarlett's life had changed since Bonnie's birth.

Motherhood had been hard for her, despite every one telling her what an easy-going baby, or more recently, what an adorable toddler Bonnie was. Had Scarlett just been too tired to notice these last couple years that her love for Ashley had dried up, evaporated and siphoned away by the nonstop, blazing demands of raising a child? Scarlett didn't know and right now she didn't really care. It was enough to know. A fresh sigh of relief escaped her mouth.

A strange glow shimmered in Ashley's silvery eyes. Scarlett wondered if he knew what she was thinking. Had he felt the shift? Or was it just her? A soft breeze wrapped around her, whipping that loose strand back into her eyes. This time she swiped it away with her own hand. Her gaze never strayed from his face.

"There is no going back, Ashley," she said, with her head held high and her voice clear. "I'm not the same…and neither are you."

He smiled—that warm and lazy grin that would always take her away to her youth. The grin that would no longer take her breath away.

"No, I suppose I'm not," he said. He blew out a whistle. "Who would have believed it Scarlett? You a single mom and CEO extraordinaire, and I…well, I'm running for office."

They shared a quiet, comfortable laugh. Ashley started to slide his hand away from her back. Over the din of the guests and insects, they heard Melanie greet a late arrival at the front door. He paused and looked toward the house, his hand negligently resting on Scarlett's hip.

"Mel should be the one running, not me." His tone was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "I almost wish I could unretire from the Agency—go back to North Korea even. At least there I didn't have to deal with schmoozing potential donors on my birthday. Unfortunately I haven't been of use to the Agency since my return, if I was of any use to them ever."

Scarlett pursed her lips. She had managed to avoid any involvement in spy stuff for years and she wanted to keep it that way. That period of her life had receded into the background, repressed by willful negligence and the more pressing demands of raising an energetic child. And anyways, Ashley's lack of enthusiasm didn't sit well with her for one very big reason: the money she'd contributed to his campaign earlier this evening.

Scarlett was only partially kidding when she teased, all dimply and coy, "Should I ask for a refund on my donation? I want to know my money's not going to waste, future senator."

"Congressman," he automatically corrected, smiling still. He pulled his hand off her hip. His face still hovered near hers. Scarlett started to stand up, but Ashley drew her in for one final embrace.

"Thanks," he muttered. "You'll always be my girl."

She relaxed into his hug. A four-letter word popped into her mind—not love, but home. Ashley would always be connected to home, just as home would always be connected to her childhood.

Click. Click. Click. A rapid shuttering sound erupted around them. Ashley shoved Scarlett away. Her head knocked against the porch's banister. Dizzily she realized the stars in her vision weren't from the blow to her skull but the camera flashes of Archie, the one-man paparazzi and conspiracy theorist who'd been hounding the Wilkes for weeks. She glared at him. Her narrowed eyes instantly focused on something else—Archie wasn't alone. A local news crew also lurked in the shadows. A green light flickered on their camera. The tape was rolling.

A new four-letter word popped into Scarlett's head—several of them, actually.

~AGW~

The next hour swept by in a whirlwind of panic and chaos. It was a topsy-turvy, Dorothy Gale-force wind that Scarlett would never quite recall with any amount of clarity. She only knew that within sixty minutes, she'd somehow landed on her feet, in her own place, and on the phone with Mammy. What had her grandma just said?

"Sorry, Mammy," Scarlett yawned, peeling off her dress. She stretched cat-like and picked up her phone, turning it off speaker, "What'd you say?"

"I said," blared Mammy's crackly voice, "that of course Bonnie went down alright. Doesn't she always when she has a sleep over with her favorite Mam-mam?"

Scarlett tucked the phone under her chin and riffled through her drawers. She pulled out a floppy t-shirt and shook loose her elaborate updo. How could Mammy not hear how close she was to losing it? She swallowed. Maybe she should be grateful, instead of skeptical.

"If Bonnie goes to sleep for you, it's only because you wind her up with so many sweets she has a major crash right at bedtime," Scarlett answered, without really thinking. " I mean, don't get me wrong, Mams. I'm glad to hear Bonnie didn't make a fuss. The last few nights she's complained about "scar-wey monsters" and I had to buy a nightlight—I was sick of her crawling into bed with me and taking up all the room."

Mammy chuckled.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing."

Mammy snorted and guffawed some more into the receiver. Scarlett rolled her eyes. Old people humor. She hoped she died before she got their jokes. With Mammy's guttural laugh as static in her ear, Scarlett yanked on the tent-as-a-t-shirt and walked down the hall into her condo's living room, cranking up the dimmer and the gas. The night had chilled her, from her bones to her heart. She needed to get off the phone, and fast.

"Mammy—"

"Did you have a nice time at the party?" her grandma interrupted.

Scarlett relaxed a bit. One knot out of a thousand unwound in her stomach. Mammy hadn't watched the ten o'clock news. Good.

"Well, did'ya sweetie?"

"I guess," Scarlett lied.

Her grandma sucked in a loud yawn.

"Well, get some rest. You get to sleep in."

"I will. Give Bonnie a kiss for me."

"Already did."

"Night, Mammy"

"Night sugar."

Scarlett tossed her phone onto the couch and sat down, debating whether she should just go to bed or eat some ice cream to drown her troubles in saturated fat. Her head plopped down on the cushy pillows. Her fingers circled her temples as she tried to forget the entire night.

Only blurry, mental snippets endured the firestorm of media attention. The ugly sneer on the gouged-out, grimy face of Archie. The gleeful leer of that Elsing reporter and her cameraman. The shame in Ashley's bleak-winter eyes. And Melanie. Melanie who had somehow managed to help Scarlett out of the house, escort her to a waiting cab and promise her that the scandal would blow over. But would it? Could it?

Had she ruined Ashley's shot at election? Had she damaged his family man, POW reputation? But most of all, had Melanie really believed her? Had she believed in her? Would she still?

And then, at long last, the name she'd been avoiding sliced straight into her brain. It nearly jacked her headache into a migraine. Rhett.

Would he just laugh at her, like he usually did when he happened to learn of her failed romantic exploits? Dating hadn't been very easy as she juggled mommy-hood and businesswoman-hood. Unlike Sheryl Sandberg, she couldn't afford a live-in nanny. Scarlett couldn't' simply lean in, she had to throw everything she had against the wall in order to succeed and she couldn't waste energy or emotion on anything else. The result of this exhausting reality on her love life: Charles Hamilton had been the only guy she'd dated with any regularity over the past two and a half years. But she wasn't thinking about Charles right now—and she'd broken up with him—again—only two weeks ago. She was thinking—fretting—about Rhett.

Would Rhett say anything? Would he even care? The two never talked much except to discuss when he wanted to take Bonnie for a weekend or what new adverb their little girl had added to her vocabulary during the week. Scarlett tried to ease her rising worry that nothing would change, that she didn't want anything to change with her strangely impersonal, familiar routine with Rhett. If he only disinterestedly mocked her when he disinterestedly asked her if Charles was taking her to a museum she would hate or a foreign film she would hate, why would he do anything other than mock her for showing up on the local news?

Her mind went rounds and rounds with these questions, as futilely as a rodent in an exercise wheel. What good was it to wonder? If she knew anything about Rhett it was that she didn't know him, except maybe that she couldn't trust him. And there was the kicker. She couldn't trust him and so she couldn't predict his reaction. It could be anything or nothing.

She wasn't sure how this night would affect any relationship in her already-messed up life. Would the public buy Ashley's campaign manger's spin on events after reporters had stamped it with their own seal of disapproval? Had Mel just put on a good face to save face or would she kick her to the curb when the cameras were off? At least she had time to scheme for Plan A thru Z before seeing Rhett. He wasn't due to take Bonnie until next weekend.

Still.

What a disaster. FEMA worthy! Chunky Monkey worthy!

Scarlett jumped up, her mouth watering for some creamy goodness and her head throbbing for some Advil. Her door speaker bleeped just as her toes hit the cold stone of her kitchen floor. Without a thought, she leaned over the counter and buzzed in the person.

She shook her head. Was this the third or fourth time this week her club-rat neighbor Mamie Bart had forgotten her keys?

Her spoon had barley carved into the delicious surface when a rat-a-tat-tat sounded on her door. Scarlett shoveled a big mouthful of ice cream into her mouth and shuffled from the kitchen to the entryway, cold pint in-hand, hair a wild mane and her moo-moo nightie doing wonders for her figure—if she had been vying for the top spot in a wide, frumpy t-shirt contest. She didn't bother checking the peep-hole but dug Mamie's spare key out of the credenza.

Her tongue glopping another big bite around her teeth, she said, swinging wide the door, "What would you do if I actually had a night life?"

"It depends, would I be part of that night life?"

Her spoon clattered to the floor. Ice cream dribbled out of her shocked-open mouth.

"May I come in," Rhett slurred, pushing past her and weaving his way to her couch.

_Key: Dorothy Gale is Dorothy of Wizard of Oz (which was sort of my theme for this chapter). FEMA is the US agency for dealing with disasters. Chunky Monkey's an ice cream flavor of Ben and Jerrry's. Sheryl Sandberg wrote the book Lean In. I think that's it for references._

_Note: The title's my second favorite Clark Gable film. The next chapter's almost done, as I thought it would fit into this chapter. But the Ashley scene took longer than I'd thought. And the next part is also longish. Just need to type out what I hand-wrote. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow. I'll post a Rosier update Wednesday. It's good to be plugged back in and back home, even if I am a millennial troglodyte and enjoyed (for the most part) my lack of connection to the outside world for this last month. _

_I have some reading and reviewing to catch up on it seems. Thanks for reviews. _


	16. Chapter 16

_Chapter 16: It Happened One Night AKA Rhett's After-Party (Part Two)_

_Previously on "A Girl's World:"_

_Scarlett realizing Ashley's just a friend. The arrival of the camera's on their heatless conversation. The appearance of Rhett at Scarlett's door. _

_Question: What's the difference between love and hate? Answer: Intent_

_Key: Make a reference to JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Monica Lewinsky. More specifically for Marilyn, her infamous birthday wishes to the president. _

_Note: Warning. Some mature themes. And I'll be honest, this chapter, which I thought would be so much fun to write, has turned into the most difficult ff chapter I've ever written. But hey, I was able to type it out tonight earlier than I planned. Reviews for this chapter, esp. appreciated. On y va...  
_

"This…isn't…good," Scarlett muttered, staring at Rhett.

Her pulse boomed. Her synapses blasted off random thoughts. Why was he here? Why was he drunk? Why was he here and drunk?

She shut her door and mechanically set Mamie's key and the pint of ice cream onto the credenza. She swiped her chin. Her hand trembled. Rhett couldn't know. Please. He couldn't know. She dragged her feet over to the couch. Stiff as a cyborg.

"Uh…Rhett…"

"Nice to see you dressed up for me," he said, waving his hand at her and flinging his legs up onto her ottoman.

She gulped and pinged her eyes down to her huge t-shirt and bare legs. Clutching one hand around her collar and the other around her waist, cinching the fabric like a belt, she whipped her head back up.

"Rhett…you know Bonnie's at Mammy's…and you're not…"

Her mind was in emergency mode. She wished she could hunker down in a panic room for the next hour. The next day. The next century.

Rhett watched her nervous twitches and quivering legs and laughed, mean and sharp. He pulled a huge bottle out of his jacket. Sloshing the bottle at her, he unscrewed the cap.

"Come and have a drink with me, Scar," he barked, a silky smirk sliding over his face.

"I think you're doing fine without me, Rhett," she said, her tongue crackling dry.

"I'd do much worse with you."

He winked and swung the bottle up, guzzling down a quarter more of it. Plunking it onto the ottoman, he shrugged out of his leather jacket. His biceps bulged against a blue muscle v-neck and his long legs were sporting designer jeans. If not for the flip-flops, he'd be the Vogue version of a Harley owner.

Scarlett glanced back down at her too-big-too-faded clothes and hugged herself tighter. If he was here to tease and torment her, this zero-sex-appeal outfit would give his jokes another target. A big one.

"Rhett I…"

She really didn't have anything to say. She just didn't want to hear what he might have to say. He sucked down some more whiskey. She bit her bottom lip, wondering. Hoping. Maybe he'd just stopped by because he was too drunk to go all the way home. Maybe he'd been at a bike bar on this side of town. Maybe she was delusional.

"Why aren't you watching the news Scarlett?"

Yup. She was delusional.

"Someone as vain as you isn't going to miss out on her fifteen minutes."

For a second she thought about denying it—but what was the point? If he'd seen the footage, he knew. Or at least he thought he knew. She opted for the high road. The truth.

"It's not what it—"

"I talked to Archie myself."

"Archie?" she asked, stunned. "Why would you know Archie?"

Rhett raised that favorite eye brow of his.

"Why wouldn't I? He's a solid P.I. and always has good intel, even if he is a racist idiot and believes everyone's a black ops agent. He thought I'd get a good laugh out of this story."

"And did you?" Scarlett's words barely slipped out of her gritted teeth.

"Of course," Rhett replied.

The leer on his brown face churned her stomach. Her knees knocked against each other and she sat down. Too angry or scared to stand up for another second. She tried to calm down. She started to count down.

"Now I don't care what really happened, or didn't happen," Rhett said, each word sliding into the next. "I doubt Ashley had the balls to actually do something about his obsession with you. And knowing Archie, his side of the story's at best fifty percent true."

She stopped her countdown at fifty. The numbers morphed into the tick-tock of the second hand on her mantle clock, the beat of her loud pulse.

"If you don't care Rhett then why are you here?"

"Well, to offer you support in your time of trial." He hiccupped. The sound made Scarlett jump. "As the mother of my child, I am naturally invested in your reputation. And as an investor in your company, I am doubly interested when your name gets connected to a scandal."

At the mention of money, Scarlett's mind whirred into business mode. She hadn't thought this would affect her money. It had better not. Screw Ashley and his stupid neediness. Screw Archie and his camera. Screw Rhett.

She glared.

"I paid you back. What investment are you talking about?"

"Touchy, touchy," he said, putting up his hands in mock apology. "I am merely reminding you of my involvement in saving your dad's company and while we're on the subject of finances, I'll have you know that however much you've donated to Wilkes for his campaign, I have donated twice as much to his opponent."

Scarlett gaped.

"But...but aren't you a—"

"Republican?" Rhett's eyes blazed with heat, swimming in alcohol. "I consider myself apolitical, actually. But fifty years ago, every good southerner was a democrat, in case you're questioning my regional loyalty."

Scarlett furrowed her brow—distracted and disinterested. The sarcasm wasn't hard to fake.

"Did you come here to give me a history lesson?"

"Hardly. But a bit of history might comfort you. After all it was an Irish upstart who changed the South's allegiance from the Democratic party to the Good Ol' one." He screwed one eye closed and scrutinized her over his bottle. "Of course, you're more of the Marilyn figure in all this, aren't you my pretty homewrecker."

Her fluctuating fear and growing confusion flared into pure anger. Homewrecker? He was one to talk.

"You don't know what the—"

"Tell me, did you sing happy birthday to him before the cameras arrived?"

Scarlett had no clue what Rhett was referencing—but she didn't need to. That smirk on his face was clue enough. He cut off her outrage with another hiccup, followed by another menacing ramble.

"But you asked why I'm here." He smiled. His white teeth glinted cruelly against his dark skin. Once more her stomach dropped. Somewhere to her ankles. "I'm here because I want to assure you how little I do care—as long as your Marilyn—or would you prefer Monica? You seemed bothered by my allusion to the former."

He paused. She managed a glare, even as her brain started to calculate escape routes. She could just walk away to her bedroom and shut him out. She could call Will. He only lived fifteen minutes away, ten if he sped. She shot a furious eye at Rhett. She could take that bottle and crack it against his jaw—break that leer right off his chiseled face.

The fantasy fizzled under Rhett's stare. Whatever twinkle might have remained in his expression fizzled along with it.

"Monica. Marylin. I don't care. Just like I don't care if your stint as the most recent other woman screws with your life. Only you better pray it doesn't mess with Bonnie's. That is my one caveat. If this story lasts for more than one news cycle, and begins to cast the tiniest whiff of garbage in her direction, I warn you. I will care."

Suddenly swallowing was painful for Scarlett. She had to concentrate on pushing the dearth of saliva down her throat. Rhett turned away. The sound of his gravelly laugh raked against her ears as asphalt into flesh.

"You know, the funny thing is I almost went to the party tonight. Melanie nearly convinced me to come and support our glorious hero. Makes me wonder if I would've walked in on you two first—you panting after Wilkes, Wilkes gunning after you. Could have been a replay of the day you broke off our engagement."

Scarlett gasped and Rhett rolled his black eyes to her face.

"You didn't actually think I believed your bull about commitment issues, did you? I saw the Wilkes' car parked outside your apartment building that day. I knew he must have helped you see the light."

He danced his fingers in the air and took a loud swig of his bottle. Scarlett shrunk back into her sofa.

"I'll admit. I've always been curious what the prick told you to change your mind. Did he promise you he'd dump his wife when she had her back turned?"

Scarlett looked away. Disgust curled her lip. Fear curled her toes. She'd been beating herself up all night for her slip-up at the party. She didn't need to be reminded about her other past mistakes with 'the-one-that-got-away-but-wouldn't-stay-away.' And to have Rhett put his spin on things, with just the right amount of x-ray truth, stung like hot wax on a hairy leg.

She clenched her fists. Rhett wouldn't shut up. His slur was textured with venom, his accusations with acid. Fear and fury drilled into her bones.

"Did he send you to the moon on nothing but hot air and deep, intense looks—or whatever hack phrase romance novelists use to titillate their huddling masses yearning to be—"

"Stop it," she hissed.

She shut her eyes. She needed to check her temper. Where was a Xanax? Not for her, but for him. She could sense how close to a break Rhett was. She really didn't want to find out what happened when a control freak lost the control part and became just a freak. Something warned her it wouldn't be pretty. It wouldn't be painless.

"Rhett…it just doesn't matter." Her voice wobbled and she turned to him. "You don't get it. It's not like that between Ashley and me."

He swilled down some more whiskey and chuckled at her. His Adam's apple bobbed along his huge neck like a rabbit in a python. It made her want to run. She couldn't finish her explanation. Red panic oozed over her brain. Rhett's uncharacteristic edginess was shoving her to the edge of her sanity.

She licked her parched lips. He opened his mouth.

"Maybe you're right Scarlett. Maybe I don't get it."

He jostled closer to her. His sour breath floated into her nose. Every muscle in her body tensed.

"Or maybe I do get it. Maybe just before you threw my ring back at me—breaking my heart and wounding my pride—Wilkes and you managed to pull a fast one on Mel and have a quickie when she stepped into the bathroom—like you nearly did tonight."

Scarlett couldn't believe he'd just said that. Had he actually just said that?

"I thought…I thought," she stuttered, "you said you didn't believe the news. I thought you said you didn't care if it was true, unless it hurt Bonnie."

She searched Rhett's bare, too-close face. It had the same secret savagery as his voice. Had he meant it? Had she broken his heart? He hiccupped and gulped down some more whiskey. No. She couldn't have. The pig didn't have a heart. Anger, her old ally, unhinged some of her jaw-freezing fear.

"Or was that just another lie? Do you even know how to tell the truth anymore?" she rasped. "Maybe Ashley isn't perfect but I know him. I can trust him."

Rhett's dark eyes danced. He laughed. The sound cut her. He pinched her cheek.

"Trust? This isn't about trust. You think I trust you?" He leaned in, his voice low and raw. "I don't trust you as far as I could throw you. And right now, I'd really like to throw you. Smash you into a brick wall. Maybe if I broke every bone in your body, you'd finally understand what kind of hell I've been in since the day I met you."

Scarlett could barely breathe. This wasn't the Rhett she was used to dealing with. This was the Rhett of lethal blows and dark alleys. She bit her lip and bit back the fright. He couldn't know how much he was scaring her.

"Get away from me."

Rhett didn't move back. He didn't blink. He just swayed right next to her, drunk and grinning. Her cheeks flashed hot. Her cold breath leaked through her teeth and she turned away.

"It's none of your business what I do Rhett or even why I called off our three-second engagement. We share a daughter, not a life." She forced her stiff legs to stand. "I'm calling you a cab. You can wait on the curb."

She took one step away from the couch before Rhett's clammy hand clawed around her wrist. His bottle crashed against a wall. She cried out in pain as he yanked her back down. Her head smacked against the hard part of the couch's arm rest. He pinned her deep into the cushions, his knees pinching her waist and his one-handed grip locking her arms above her head. She screamed and flailed.

"Get off of me!"

"Shut up!" he yelled. "For once shut up Scarlett!"

His knees ground against her sides and his free hand grabbed her chin, forcing closed her jaw. Her brain couldn't cope with the shock of his violence. Her body couldn't fight him off. She had no choice. She stopped struggling.

Rhett had every advantage. She stared up into his flint-dark face. And he knew it.

His glazed-gaze swerved all around her face. He loosened his hold on her jaw. She cringed shut her eyes when his rough fingers started to caress her cheek. The touch was so soft it was brutal, so familiar it was sinister. Tears stung the corners of her lids and prickled into her nose. Was Rhett going to try and seduce her before he—what was he going to do?

She felt his weight shift against her stomach and his heavy panting blasted into her ear. His lips brushed against her skin. Blood swirled to her gut. The instinctual rush of desire nauseated her. With bile in her throat and tears in her eyes she jerked her body, but one cruel crunch from Rhett's legs stopped her.

"Scarlett, do you know how many times I've sat in my car after dropping Bonnie off—imagining running back up here once her light's gone off and barging through the door?"

His free hand slipped down her face, his fingers lightly stroking her neckline. More lust mixed with disgust. More tears eeked out the edges of her eyes.

"Sometimes I imagine you're doing the dishes, with that horrible indy-folk music you love blasting on the radio so you don't hear me come in. I stop to watch you dance—or you trying to dance—but the smile on my face fades. You're not dancing—you're crying. You drop a spoon or a sippy cup and turn around. You see me, but you're not scared or even that surprised. You stop crying. You smile. You tell me you hoped I would come back. You ask me to stay…"

Rhett finished talking, his voice dissolving into a soundless heat on her neck. Scarlett opened her stinging eyes and waited for him to say more. She could hear a siren bleating on a nearby block. Hear the water draining in her neighbor's pipes. Hear the hammering of her pulse. But nothing from him—even his breathing seemed to have paused.

Suddenly he pulled back. His eyes sparked with an emotion she couldn't describe. A tear snaked down her face, Rhett's finger trailed its wet tracks. This time she didn't cringe at his caress.

"I could do anything to you right now," he said hollowly. "Do you know that? I could rape you and make you forget. I could kill you and no one would ever know. I'm that good at what I do. Piss drunk and I wouldn't leave so much as a follicle behind."

The fear crept through her veins, cold and heavy. She swallowed. Rhett's grip still bruised her skin but it was the pain in his voice that really sliced at her. That really frightened her.

"Rhett…"

"What would you do if I kissed you Scarlett?" He dragged a finger across her dry lips. "If for just one night you pretended you cared? Do you like role play? You could be the smitten wife and I could be the devoted husband."

She didn't know what to say. His vulnerability locked her down better than his violence. She felt his clasp on her wrists slowly loosen, his vicious knees straighten. His legs flattened over hers, his belt buckle dug into her belly. Warm fingers slid down one arm. He pushed himself partially up, raised on one elbow. He glided his other hand through her mess of hair.

"You don't have to do anything, Scarlett. Just let me pretend. Let me make love to you, like I love you and you love me."

Rhett's gaze never wavered away from hers as he lowered his face. Their noses touched. She closed her eyes. Her lashes brushed against the chilly damp of the leftover tears on her skin. His hand cupped the back of her neck and his lips melted onto hers.

She didn't say no. She didn't say yes. She didn't say anything.

When it was all over she was confused. Knocked-on-the-head, thrown in a sack and spun in a wash cycle confused. For starters she had no idea how they'd ended up in her bed. She had no idea where or when her clothes had come off. She had no idea what to think. What to feel. What to do. She had no idea what had just happened—only that it had never happened to her before.

Rhett's 'pretend' love hadn't just washed over her—it had drowned her. The brutal passion pulling her under as a riptide, everything she thought she knew about this man shattering with each fresh wave of his warm assault. His hands sweeping along her curves. His lips rippling along her skin. His skin blending with hers.

The entire experience had hovered between the blurred edges of pleasure and pain. Excruciatingly tender. Exquisitely painful. So different from their hot and heavy, sweaty and separate releases of before, this time Rhett had stripped her from the inside out. Her lips were bruised. Her body was sore. Her heart was broken…open.

But how was that possible? It had been pretend. It had been play. It had been pushed on her. She hadn't wanted it. He'd made her want it. So what did that mean?

Rhett lay beside her in the dark. His breathing so steady, so silent she wondered if he'd passed out. His sweat stunk of alcohol. The yeasty stench rolled up her nostrils. Confused, hurt, angry, and somehow elated—she had one instinct—to run.

She threw back the sheets and silently tornadoed through her room. She snatched some underwear and clothes from a clean laundry basket by the nightstand, and yanked into the mismatched shirt and yoga pants. Before she flew into the living room—heading for her car keys and ultimately the road—she glanced behind. Rhett's open eyes glinted back at her.

"I…"

"My car's faster," he said evenly. "My keys are in my jacket."

She stared at his indistinct features, his black eyes. She knew turning on the lights and seeing his expression wouldn't help her understand him any better.

"Thanks," she said. She spun away, leaving a naked, drunk and awake Rhett in her bedroom.


	17. Chapter 17

_Scene: Bonnie O'Hara's Birth _

_Previously on A Girl's World:_

_Rhett showing up drunk at Scarlett's. Scarlett leaving him in her bed. Melanie pushing Scarlett into a cab after Ashley's party. _

_Note: The next couple chapters will be flashbacks mixed with 'current' times, to hopefully give a better understanding of where Scarlett and Rhett's relationship was before the last chapter. So…I have a couple scenes in mind that I am planning on working in, but if you have a request, let me know. I'm flexible. _

_Lawdy: India's in the next chapter, along with a gaggle of girls. Guest: Thanks for all your reviews. Helen: The hard part wasn't the act of writing, it was the content. And thanks to the other reviewers. _

_Question: Is there such a thing as satisfaction? Answer: You can't always get what you want, but if you try real hard, it just might be, you get what you need._

* * *

_"You can come in Rhett. I'm done nursing."_

_Scarlett pulled the hospital gown over her chest just in time. Rhett slipped around the curtain. She laughed out loud. What was he thinking? _

_"How'd you fit that in your car?"_

_He peeked around the huge tuft of teddy bear fur that eclipsed his face, and grinned. _

_"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."_

_"What does that mean?"_

_"It means," he set the mammoth stuffed animal on the chair beside the hospital bed and patted it on the head, "that he shouldn't worry about getting back to your place. I'm here."_

_"Yeah, well, I don't know where we can fit it in the nursery."_

_"Don't listen to her Mr. Bear, she's just jealous I didn't bring one for her." _

_Scarlett shook her head. She'd never seen Rhett act so…boyish. He winked and dug into a grocery bag slung on his arm, fishing out a bright bouquet of tiger lilies. _

_"Take these as recompense…and as congrats. I saw Mammy in the parking garage. She said you did great."_

_"Thanks," Scarlett muttered, blood oozing into her cheeks and confusion lining her brow. _

_People had been saying that to her all day. It still baffled her. Great at what? At being born with an elastic cervix and flexible hips? Scarlett rarely questioned compliments but this praise irked her. Sure she'd had a rush of amazing adrenaline after it was all done but her practical brain just kept hammering the fact that women had been pushing out babies since Eve. She'd felt the same nameless annoyance an hour ago when the lactation consultant had gushed about the shape of her nipples. Yeah. Because she'd done something other than go through puberty to achieve them? _

_The main reason she'd caved (only last week) to the idea of breastfeeding was thanks to the supermarket trip she'd taken to buy formula. Yikes. The factories were booming but her fist was still tight. She'd save her cash, and make Melly, the La Leche League's most vocal proponent, happy. Not to mention trim her baby fat. At no point had she wanted some part-time employee and full-time hippie salivating over her ideal breasts._

_Rhett had walked in on her second time feeding the baby. And so far, so good. Scarlett was actually enjoying it. Her little baby appeared to have as healthy an appetite as her mama. An image of a teeny mouth opening and wrinkly fists beating against her skin flickered in Scarlett's mind. A slim smile turned up the corners of her lips at the memory. _

_She looked at Rhett. The flowers hung at his side. His eyes were warm and deep. A thick moment passed between them. It thinned into nothing._

_"I can't really take those right now," she said, bobbing her head at the flowers. Some of their brightness had faded; their petals wilted. _

_ "No."_

_He shot his eyes around the room, looking for a place to put them. He jerked this way and that way. Something was off about him. Scarlett was too exhausted to think straight but if she had to put an adjective on it, she would have called him jumpy. Or was that a verb? _

_Honestly she was surprised—and even a little disappointed—that he hadn't rushed into the room and grabbed their daughter right away. This was the first time he had seen her—the eerie-3D-ultra-sound photo didn't count. _

_Rhett's search ended. His mouth split into a playful grin and he plopped the flowers into Scarlett's 32 oz. water bottle. _

_"Hey!"_

_"They'll bring you another one." _

_She rolled her eyes. He shrugged. The baby gurgled in Scarlett's arms and the two immediately looked down at the face of their three-hour old newborn. _

_Dark curls, rosy skin, long lashes and a whopping 8 lbs. 10 oz. The chubbiness plumped her cheeks and made her look less like an alien newborn and more like a human one-month old. _

_"She's beautiful."_

_Scarlett heard the reverence in his voice. The image of her mom kneeling at her bedside with rosaries strung along her fingers and a quiet peace on her face flitted into her mind. Prayer. She'd uttered about a million of those during transition—the point when labor blasts into a nose dive and all a woman can do is pray she doesn't crash and burn before the landing gear kicks down and the baby flies out. _

_"Can I hold her?" Rhett asked. _

_She heard it again—that whisper of worship—and flicked her eyes to Rhett. No more rebel-without-a-cause grin. This man had just seen the light. He was converted._

_"Of course." _

_The handing off was a little awkward. Neither Scarlett nor Rhett knew how to do this dance; to share this moment together when they weren't actually together. His hands brushed along her forearms, his wrists grazed the tops of her breasts through the thin hospital gown. A shiver shuddered down Scarlett's spine. For the hundredth time she wondered—how would this day have been different if she'd trusted him? If she'd married him? He would have been in the room. He would have charmed the nurses. He would have held her hand. _

_"She looks like you," he said. The smile was in his voice, on his lips and in his eyes. "Do you know what you want to name her?"_

_He would have asked—what should we name her? Scarlett blinked back a tear. It must be the hormones. Rhett wouldn't have asked. He would have demanded. They would have argued. _

_"Well, I've had a top five list but I kind of like Eugenia."_

_It was the only thing that could have pulled his attention away from the baby. His eye brow and mouth wrinkled. _

_"Eugenia?"_

_"Well, I'd call her Genie." _

_No change in his expression. _

_"I think it's cute." _

_Still nothing but a lopsided frown._

_"Old names are really popular right now, you know."_

_"You shouldn't give into peer pressure. Just because all the cool kids are naming their babies Gertrude or Chastity doesn't mean you have to."_

_"Well what do you suggest, Mr. Father-Knows-Best?"_

_She huffed this, crossing her arms and glaring up at him. The look he flashed at her stopped her mid-snort. Hospitals were always drafty but the intensity in those opal orbs sent an arctic chill down her back. Rhett held her gaze before dropping his eyes to the baby._

_"I don't know," he sighed. "You want an old name? How about…Ella?"_

_"Ella?"_

_His face was still turned down. A ghost of a smile curved over his lips. _

_"Or Bonnie. That's always been…"_

_"What?"_

_His shoulders sank as his head lifted. _

_"That's always been my nickname for you—well it started out as your codename."_

_"What? Bonnie?"_

_"Bonnie lass, actually."_

_Rhett's eyes gleamed. Red heat splotched his sun-bronzed neck. A flush tingled across Scarlett's skin. He lowered his face. Scarlett watched the blush seep out of Rhett's tan. She wanted to tap that depth she'd seen glistening in his eyes, to dig into that well and go for a swim. Mammy had always said still waters run deep. Check mark. She finally got that saying. _

_She cleared her throat and shook her head. These hormones were making her loopy. Or maybe it was the Percocet. _

_Bonnie—she spun the word over her mind and tasted it on her tongue. It was sweet, cotton-candy flavored._

_"I like it," she said. "Bonnie." _

_"Glad to be of use." _

_Was that sarcasm or shame? _

_"Bonnie But—" Rhett clenched his jaw and stroked the delicate, pink cheek of his daughter. "Bonnie O'Hara, nice to meet you."_

_His slip up hung in the air, a heatwave of things undone and words unspoken. A swelter of awkwardness. For months Rhett had been pressing her to give him permission to establish not only his paternity but his legal rights as the father; to be able to do more than pay child support. Scarlett had just kept pushing it off. She hadn't had time to think about what she wanted; or what she wanted for her baby. And she didn't want another hot debate to spark up about it. Not tonight. Melanie would be coming back any minute. She shouldn't have to diffuse the sticky tension. _

_Suddenly desperate, Scarlett cast her mind about for another topic. Rhett cooed the name Bonnie. She had an idea. _

_"I have a nickname for you, too," she said, fanning her split ends against her palms. She needed a hair cut—and a dye job. "Do you want to hear it?" _

_"Sure." _

_She stopped playing with her hair. Her eyes sparkled with mischief he didn't bother to see. _

_"Hamvil."_

_"Hamvil?" _

_A smirk slid over her mouth at the disdain in his rumbly voice. _

_"You're such a snob Rhett."_

_"True. But that doesn't mean the name's not idiotic. Hamvil. Sounds like a can of processed meat."_

_"You are beefy."_

_A pause. He finally looked up at her. His eyes laughed, even if his mouth wasn't. _

_"So where'd you come up with the name? It's clear from that stupid smile that you made it up yourself. Only a creator's bias could ignore how half-baked it is."_

_Scarlett forced the dimple, just as she'd forced this subject._

_"I thought you looked like Jon Hamm or a suntanned Henry Cavill when we met." _

_Something raw flickered in those black pools. Rhett pushed out his bottom lip and turned his eyes to his daughter. _

_"Superman and Don Draper?" He blew out his breath. "Maybe we do have a shot Bonnie."_

_Their baby yawned. Her little body seemed so much smaller encased in Rhett's muscular arms. Scarlett said it before she'd even realized she'd thought it. But it was the right decision. Some part of her had always known that. No matter her reservations about him. No matter her trust issues with him. Bonnie deserved a dad. _

_"I'll sign the papers Rhett." She heard him suck in his breath. "I'll give you parental rights."_

* * *

Scarlett pounded her fists on the steering wheel. She couldn't get that day out of her head. Had she made a mistake? Should she have let him in, even that much? Would tonight have happened if she hadn't? What had happened tonight?

The strident lights and streaks of the city whizzed by as she drove Rhett's porche at mach speeds. She didn't have the answers. She knew she couldn't keep driving forever.

The dashboard flashed with a final warning. No gas. The car sputtered. She cruised to a halt.

Go figure.

She looked at the clock on the car stereo. 3 AM. Maybe _she_ couldn't sleep either.

Scarlett grabbed her phone. It rang three times before a groggy voice answered.

"Scarlett?"

The tears had come back. Another flash flood of grief and confusion.

"Mel?" she sobbed. "I need you to come get me."

* * *

_Key: Jon Hamm=Don Drapper (Mad Men, a TV show about the swinging sixties and Mad Ave). I'm not giving a key for that guy who wears an S. But do all boys from the real Jersey shore look like that? And I should note that in most states unwed fathers are treated about the same as anonymous sperm donors. Georgia's actually a little more progressive than other states but legally Rhett would have no rights as a father unless Scarlett gave him the say so and even then... _

_Thanks. My goal is to finish this within a month. So I just might get into a manic writing phase. (Same goes for my P&P story.) Cheers. _


	18. Chapter 18

_Chapter 18: All Good Girls Go to Heaven...and Hate Scarlett O'Hara. Too many scenes jumbled together, but I think you can pick them out. _

_Previously on A Girl's World:_

_Scarlett watching Belle's reality show (chp. 7) and meeting her (chp. 8); Waking up in Belle's place (chp. 10/11); Ashley and Scarlett getting caught (chp. 15); Rhett watching Scarlett leave, from her bed (chp. 16); Scarlett calling Melanie for help in Rhett's porche (chp. 17). _

_____Key: Red Hatters is a social club for women over the age of 50. Braxton Hicks are 'fake' contractions. Twilight Zone, TV show about alternate universes and weird stuff. And I think that's it. _

_Question: What's the only thing you want when your back's against a wall? Answer: That wall to be your friend._

"Thanks for picking me up." Scarlett sat with her knees curled up, holding a dangerously-full mug of tea. She watched the steam rise up from it. Spice wafted into her nostrils. It reminded her of other scents. "And for bringing me a jug of gasoline."

"Happy to do it," Melanie answered. Her face was marred with worry. Her brown eyes glistened like the tea. Murky but clear. She smiled with her lips. "Do you want to go to sleep?"

Scarlett glanced down at the pile of afghan blankets and pillows at her feet. They were sitting in the Wilkes' basement, on their hide-a-bed couch. Mel hadn't even asked Scarlett if she'd wanted to come over. In a kind, no-nonsense voice she'd told Scarlett that she would meet her at her house. After filling up the porsche's tank, they'd driven straight here. Within minutes Mel had put on a pot of tea and headed downstairs to pull out the bed and put on fresh sheets. No discussion. No debate. No third-degree. In fact Mel hadn't even asked anything. Not one single question mark about why Scarlett had been driving Rhett's car on a deserted Atlanta highway in the middle of the night. She'd just done what she always did—acted like everything was perfectly normal and natural.

But it wasn't.

"I slept with Rhett tonight."

Scarlett's face and voice were empty. Her head was full.

Slept? She'd _slept _with him? When had sleep gotten tangled up with sex? Nothing that hardcore should be labeled as something so soft. She wanted to clarify. She needed to. She looked at Melanie.

"We had sex."

Mel's translucent cheeks warmed pink. Her eyes widened.

"Yes…I didn't think you meant…" She swallowed her reply. The blush glowed from her crown to her neckline. "And this is your first time…since…since you…since Bonnie?"

A dribble of amusement leaked into Scarlett's dark mood. Despite knowing Mel for years they'd never had a good, old-fashioned sex, orgasm and rock 'n roll girl gab. For obvious reasons. Scarlett had never wanted to hear about the rise and fall of Ashley's libido and Melanie just wasn't that kind of woman. Honestly Scarlett wasn't either. She'd never been one to kiss and tell. But living in a sorority before she'd been forced to drop out of Georgia Tech, she'd been unwillingly involved in countless women-tell-all chats. TMI. She still recalled way too much about Dimity Monroe's variable g-spot. Would Mel even know what that was? Did Scarlett?

She shook her head, nearly slopping hot liquid onto her lap.

"I don't know where to begin," she said. Everything was so heavy. Heavy and suffocating. She felt like she was drowning, but in air.

"You don't have to say anything," Mel replied, rushed. She swiped her own mug from the end table and slurped a loud sip. "But I am here to listen."

Scarlett smiled. Real warmth cracked through the protective wall, cascading in with light. Strange. It'd only been eight hours since she'd realized she just wasn't into Ashley as anything other than a friend. And in that split-second of understanding something else had shifted. All her dislike for his wife.

What would she do without this woman? She was her only girlfriend. Case in point. The baby shower.

_The shower was murmuring to an end. Plates of half-eaten cake with pink frosting teetered precariously on arm rests and book shelves. Piles of crumpled up wrapping paper towered in a corner, surrounded by mounds of toys and frilly clothes. Most guests lingered, a smattering of drowsy faces and hushed conversations, mothers basking in the peace of an afternoon without children, wives in no hurry to return to their husbands; women, career or caretaker and most often both. _

_The guest of honor and hostess were missing from the crowded, lazy room. Scarlett had kissed Mammy and Dilcey good-bye, promising to pop in an evening to eat supper with Pork and the family, before rushing off to the bathroom for the fourth time in two hours. Melanie was in the kitchen, refilling the tea pitcher and slicing up some more lemons. _

_Scarlett shuffled her way back toward the party-goers, wondering how much longer she needed to stay. She'd been in such a hurry to use the toilet that she'd taken the champagne flute (full of sparkling cider) with her to the bathroom. She twiddled it between her fingers, moping. With Mammy and Dilcey gone, she didn't have a friend left in the room—even if she did have a sister. Why couldn't have Suellen been the one to ditch civilization and live in a hut on the Amazon? Hidden in the shadows of the hallway, she heard Maybelle Merriwether whisper loudly to a cluster of women on the sofa. _

_"No, the way I heard it was that this Rhett Butler guy broke off the engagement, not Scarlett." _

_"Probably found her in bed with another guy," muttered India Wilkes. _

_Light, acidic giggles pattered in the air. Scarlett felt the sting of them on her skin. _

_"I don't know—have you seen who she's claiming to be the daddy?" Hetty Tarleton raised her eyebrows. "He's hot. I saw a picture of him in the tabloids." _

_"Tabloids? That's just perfect," laughed India, nudging her sister Honey. "Told you she probably just picked somebody at random to be the dad. The odds were on her side that they'd had sex with her at least once."_

_"That's harsh, India," said Fanny Elsing. She shook her head and grimaced. "Not that I doubt it, but still. This is her baby shower."_

_"I came for Melanie, not for her."_

_The other women bit their cheeks, their lips, or looked at the ceiling. Guilt was smeared all over their faces. A red, hot tingle of humiliation spread over Scarlett. They _all_ had come for Melanie, not her. She'd suspected as much, but hearing and seeing it confirmed was worse. So much worse. _

_Scarlett heard a familiar scoff. Her gut twisted painfully. Her hand trembled. This person knew the truth—or much of it—and wasn't even defending her? Hetty's gigantic red mane had blocked Suellen from Scarlett's view, but her sister leaned forward and revealed herself. ____Smug as a pug. _

_"Don't feel bad, even I came for Mel," __she said. _  


_Fanny had the decency to fidget uncomfortably. _

_"I came for the baby," chirped Honey, sucking on her thumb nail, completely oblivious. "I don't care who the mom is. I'm gonna spend a fortune if I ever have a baby girl. They'll rename Baby Gap after me. Baby Honey"_

_India rolled her eyes but the other girls laughed. _

_"So what do you mean you saw him in the tabloids?" Maybelle asked Hetty, rewinding the conversation. Her face glowed with a manic light. "Come on, give us the dirt."_

_"Oh, well, he's dating that reality star—you know the porn star turned soccer mom or something—"_

_Honey perked up. _

_"Ooh. Belle Watling? From the 'New Southern Belle' on A&E?" _

_Hetty nodded. Her bushy frizz scratched against the women on either side of her. They ducked for cover. _

_"I love that show!" gushed Honey. "She owns a strip club too, and the cameras go everywhere with her during the season. It's crazy some of the stuff that goes on in a place like that. One of the girls was still stripping—I mean they don't show that part—but they showed her just before she went on. And she had to be like six months pregnant." _

_"Well now we know how Scarlett met Butler." India smirked. "She's probably still giving him private lap dances."_

_Crack. Scarlett looked down at the broken glass in her hand. Blood oozed out from her palm. Shards of glitter scintillated in the dim light. She didn't know when embarrassment had switched into anger, or curiosity about Rhett's love life had flipped into outrage. Only that it had. _

_The huddle of gossipers glanced up at the brittle sound. Smiling faces morphed into shocked ones. Suellen shielded her face with her hand. India was the last to turn around. A cool glare quickly froze over the surprise on her pale face. _

_Scarlett flung the jagged glass spear onto the carpet, swiped the blood onto her dress and strode right up next to India. _

_"Sorry to break up the fun, girls." She twisted on a frightening smile. "Don't stop talking for my account."_

_"Scarlett…I'm…" mumbled Maybelle._

_"We didn't mean…" trailed off Fanny. _

_"Is it true?" asked India. "Was Butler a client of yours?" _

_Scarlett took a deep breath. Her eyes could have set the whole house on fire._

_"Why? Do you want to know a better way to get a guy interested? We all know you can't keep them interested once you have them."_

_India sneered. Her face was stone. Stu had broken up with her a week after Brent had died. That was only three weeks ago. She probably still texted him, begging to be reunited. _

_Scarlett tilted her head and elevatored her gaze up and down India's flat chest and hipless hips. _

_"I've never been in a strip club," she said. Of course, she had. Belle's, actually. And with Rhett. But that was beside the point. "But I don't think you can afford the plastic surgery you would need to work there."_

_After that, things became hairy. Hetty Tarleton hairy. A screaming match just shy of a nail-clawing, cat fight. A four-hour Braxton Hicks' contraction inducing yell fest. The dozing group of Red Hatters bustled into the throng, shoving their big noses into everything. Aunt Pitty cowered behind Mrs. Merriwether. Mrs. Bonnell tried to ease the tensions. But only one person could save the day. _

_Nobody saw or heard Melanie until she came out swinging pots and pans together. Her kind eyes dazzled with ferocity. The steel frying pans clanked with fury. She climbed on top of her coffee table and scolded each and every woman, except for Scarlett. It all ended in tears and tissues. _

_As the guests left, their heads and hands hanging down, they begged one more time with Melanie for forgiveness and apologized to Scarlett. India managed a curt nod. Their shame was so palpable that Scarlett almost believed they were sincere. Almost. _

_When the room was empty, Melanie turned to Scarlett and spoke._

_"I heard it all Scarlett, just like you. And you know what?" She pressed her palms against her flushed cheeks. "You're ten times prettier than Belle Watling. I've seen her pictures in those gossip rags in the grocery store. You must have broken that man's heart when you broke up with him."_

_ Scarlett stared at Melanie. How had this adult-sized American Girl doll known that of all the things Scarlett had heard this afternoon, the thing that bothered her the most was learning that Rhett was dating someone else? Was dating Belle Watling? _

_Melanie smiled grimly at Scarlett. An errant balloon floated by and she swatted it away._

_"Come on," she said. "We need to get that cut checked out. You don't want a staph infection a couple weeks before your due date."_

_She gently grabbed Scarlett's wrist and led her into the kitchen. The cutting board sat out. The slices of lemons had been diced into pulp. _

"Scarlett…we don't have to talk about Rhett tonight."

Melanie's voice lulled her back to the present. The present! Scarlett thumped her mug onto the floor and smacked her palm against her forehead. She closed her eyes. She couldn't talk about Rhett. She had to talk about Ashley.

"Mel, I must explain about last night—"

But her trusting friend stopped her.

"No. You don't need to explain anything."

Scarlett heard a steel in Melanie's voice she hadn't known existed. It made the cut from her guilt so much worse.

"No, I really do."

"No you don't."

Melanie slammed her own mug down and jumped up, starting to pace. Her huge eyes swung back and forth. The hair in her bun was unraveling; swirls of dark brown spiraled in every direction. Her arms were wound across her chest. All she needed was a straight-jacket.

Scarlett's hand dropped away from her face. A mad, mug-slamming Mel? Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

"I'm just so sick and tired of people talking about you Scarlett. The shower wasn't the first time I've heard India's opinion of you. You should hear her other theories. They're ridiculous! And now the news crews and magazines calling me. I don't care what that Archie...that...that Peeping Tom saw or what they videotaped. You and Ashley are friends." She stopped and threw her hands up. "Friends! Don't people know what that means?"

Her hands fell to her sides. The tirade ended. A hush of serenity stole over her features. She gave Scarlett a look of compassion.

Ouch. In that one generous glance, Scarlett knew. She could never tell Melanie the entire truth. Never. She couldn't even tell her the truth about tonight with Ashley, as innocent as it was.

For the rest of her life she would carry this wound with her. Her fingers brushed along the scar on her palm from the day of her baby shower. Some injuries never really healed. Sometimes they just kept bleeding. This one would.

Melanie walked around the pulled-out mattress and sat down in front of Scarlett. Black crescents dusted the under of her smiling eyes. She tucked back some of her escaped curls.

"Don't worry what people say. It'll blow over when they see that we're still friends. I believe you and I believe Ashley. I believe you without needing to even hear you. I know what friendship is." She sighed and curved a slight smile. "We both do."

Stunned, speechless, Scarlett nodded. She tried to smile back. But she couldn't. Instead she broke down. Under the pain of her guilt and the trauma of this night, she collapsed against Melanie's shoulder. The story about Rhett, about this night with him, bubbled up, spilling out in sobs. This much she could share. She confessed almost all, from the second he'd stepped through her door to the moment she'd stepped out of it; ignoring the occasional shudder or unchecked gasp from Melanie. Her only girlfriend. Her only friend.

After minutes, maybe even hours, Scarlett's voice weakened into a hoarse nothing. Her tears slowed. She sensed something big was just out of reach, a wisp of nothing that could burst into something. But she was too tired to know, too deflated to wonder. The faint glow of dawn leaked into the basement. Melanie threw a blanket over her and whispered good night.

Scarlett's eyes slid open and shut, watching Melanie tiredly weave her way toward the stairs. Through her blinking vision and heavy brain she realized Melanie must think she was asleep. She had paused on the bottom step, her dark head bowed. Her unseen lips were uttering a prayer. In the stillness of the morning Scarlett could hear the soft, pleading words.

"Please, Lord, if they can't love each other, help them to stop hurting each other."

Melanie trudged up the stairs. Scarlett rolled onto her back. She was fully awake now. That small cloud of understanding on the horizon of her mind had blown up into a massive storm; a screaming, sweeping tornado, whirling her out of the comfortable solitude and predictable routine she had built as a shelter for the last several years, and dropping her down in the midst of a terrifying, but hopeful realm of possibility.

High on this second wind, Scarlett threw off the blanket and scribbled a note to Melanie on the back of a voided check she'd found in her purse. She shivered. Would Rhett still be sleeping? Or would he be gone?

_Note: Thanks for the reviews, and the requests._

_I'll add a note while I'm fixing a typo. Ummm. This story's got more life left in it than one more chapter, more than three chapters. That's as far as I have it planned out. And I'm sorry but the next chapter's not going to be the confession and confrontation. I have one more flashback and some need of narrative before I get there. So it's going to be Scarlett driving (not running) through a misty, humid morning. Cheers. _

_Disclaimer: Mitchell estate owns almost all of this. (I think I forgot a disclaimer...better late than never.) And with that: _

_"What a few short weeks it had been since she was safe and secure! What a little while since she and everyone else had thought that Atlanta could never fall, that Georgia could never be invaded. But the small cloud which appeared in the northwest four months ago had blown up into a mighty storm and then into a screaming tornado, sweeping away her world, whirling her out of her sheltered life, and dropping her down in the midst of this still, haunted desolation. Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia?"_

_That's the crux of it all, ain't it? Is Tara still standing? Is Scarlett?_


	19. Chapter 19

_Chapter 19: The Way We Weren't (The Rough Marriage Years AKA The Marriage Years)_

_Previously on Girl's World: Scarlett meeting Belle at auction (9); Scarlett's visit to Gerald (10); Bonnie's shower, learning that Rhett's dating Belle (18); Rhett's drunken visit to Scarlett (16); Scarlett realizing 'something' and leaving Mel's house (18). _

_Question: Will sticks and stones break my bones? Answer: No, words will._

"Where'd he put it?" Scarlett grumbled.

Her body was contorted, head turned sideways into the dash and limbs crisscrossed over the seats, as she searched Rhett's Porsche for his travel first aid kit. Going on no sleep, her passive headache had flared into a full-assault on her cerebrum. If Rhett was still at her place, she needed to be as clear-thinking, and seeing, as possible.

The cool rains of last night had swelled into a muggy dawn. Scarlett had been looking for the kit for only a minute and her skin was already glossed in sweat. The car's vents hadn't had time to blast away the trapped heat inside the cab, and twisting and clambering in this small, hot space wasn't helping her throbbing head or her over-reactive sweat glands. Finally her wet fingers slapped against a cold metal tin tucked far underneath the passenger seat. She knocked her head against the glove box and swore, before untangling herself into a sitting position with the container in hand.

Wicking the sweat off her forehead, she unlatched the lid and smiled. Rhett always kept horse-sized capsules of pain meds in his first aid kit. She downed a pill, dry throat and all. Shoving the box back under the seat, something pricked her hand. She flattened her palm over the sharp-edged culprit. It felt cool and waxy. A photo? She snatched it up and looked at it.

A bawling three month old Bonnie draped in antique lace, Rhett holding her, grinning—Scarlett could hear his annoying cackle in her head at the sight—and herself, her teeth gritted in a smile. The twinkling lights and lilies of the celebratory décor were blurred in the background; shimmering halos of luminescent white. The picture was a lie. The day had been anything but heavenly.

_The post-christening gathering was somewhere between small and large; Pork and Dilcey's house bedecked in elegant seashell hues, the clusters of flowers transforming the front room into a meadow. Crystal vases and crystal glasses glinted, casting diamond-shaped rays onto the walls and furniture. Smiles were warm. Conversations were hushed. _

_Scarlett stood alone in a corner, sipping the bubbles of her Perrier. She scanned the crowd. The sharp snap of the carbonation on her tongue tricked her mouth for a millisecond into thinking she was drinking champagne. She could hear pieces of each conversation, the different voices ebbing in and out as the words shifted in volume. _

_Carreen, her face freckled and brown, talked with Will about her adventures in humanitarian relief. Suellen chewed on her cheek as Frank and Sam jawed about capitol gains. Mammy and Dilcey cooed over Bonnie, the grandma and godmother bragging about which one would spoil her the most. On a solitary sofa, Pork listened, sadness on the edges of his lips, as Gerald spoke of places that no longer existed and people who no longer lived. _

_Pork caught Scarlett's wandering gaze. He nodded, the sad smile rising up into his eyes. Her father's absent lilt floated into her ears. She swallowed down the sorrow and turned away. This was her first time seeing him out of the hospital in years. It'd been hit and miss in terms of success. Every miss had been painful. She kept her eyes roaming, so that her mind would also._

_The Wilkes and Hamiltons and an eclectic collection of friends and associates moved and mingled on the other side of the room. Charles was watching her. He ducked his head and rubbed his neck when their eyes locked. _

_Throw him in some Burberry and spackle on some stubble and he could pass for a dirty-blond Hugh Dancy. He peeked at her again. The opposite of suave. Scarlett lifted her glass to her lips and almost smiled. But she noticed someone else's smile first. Or leer more like it. _

_Her eyes sharpened into green daggers. Snap. Crackle. All the bubbly softness of the afternoon popped. The water bubbles popped into her open mouth. Scarlett could use a drink. A real one. _

_Rhett's smirk widened at her glare. He snaked his way toward her, with Belle clinging to his arm like spandex. Scarlett was surprised the bad-dye-job diva wasn't wearing any spandex herself, almost as surprised that Rhett had been bold, or stupid, enough to bring his infamous girlfriend to their baby's christening. _

_They stopped in front of Scarlett. Rhett slid his arm around Belle, his hand limp against her hourglass hip. It was such a couple-thing to do. Scarlett's gut twisted but she didn't know why. A spark flashed in Rhett's eyes, the embers of a cigarette that fade with the smoker's breath. Scarlett's glare wavered for a second at the waning light, the glowing dare in his face. Belle's twangy accent ended 'it' before Scarlett could figure out what 'it' was. _

_"This is just a lovely get-together, Scarlett. I was just askin' Rhett if the godparents always host these things or are Pork and Dilcey just an extra-large pair of sweethearts. I don't know a thing about Catholics, 'cept that they've got great taste in architecture."_

_Scarlett dragged her gaze away from Rhett and onto Belle. This was the first time she'd seen her up close since the night of the auction. Hello Botox. _

_"I can't really say. Bonnie's my first." She glanced at Rhett. "And my last."_

_"You never know." Belle smiled sweetly, or the part of her face that could move did. She combed her red nails over Rhett's arm that wrapped around her waist. Her fingers danced on his wrist. "That baby bug starts to bite again faster than you'd think. I always wish my boy had a brother or sister. But my clock has ticked and it has tocked, if you catch my drift. But sweetie you got loads of time. You'll sing a different tune when you find yourself a man."_

_Belle was good—maybe even good-hearted. During her entire speech that sweetness in her face had barely soured. But it had soured enough to goad Scarlett. Her green eyes turned to flint. Her lips peeled back into a sneer. Belle's mouth curved at the oncoming challenge._

_"Belle would you mind going and getting me a drink?" Rhett casually cut in. "And take your time."_

_Both women looked at him. Belle's gritty, game face sparkled into a dazzling smile. _

_"Course honey," she cooed. _

_She stretched up to kiss Rhett and he tilted his cheek toward her lips but she grabbed his chin and planted her mouth solidly, sensually onto his. _

_"Be a nice boy, Rhett or no treats when you get home." _

_She patted his cheek and turned back to Scarlett, whose eyes quivered in disgust. _

_"Scarlett."_

_"Belle."_

_"It's always so…interesting when we get together, ain't it sugar?"_

_She spun around, her torso doing the tango as she walked. Scarlett saw Sam and Frank follow Belle's backside with their eyes when she wound her way around them. Men. Scarlett sighed. It exhaled as a growl. She flipped her gaze back to Rhett. Her glower could have cut up his face. _

_"I can't believe you brought her here! The church was bad enough but this is my family's home—or just as well might be!"_

_He cocked an eyebrow. _

_"Jealous much?"_

_"Delusional much?"_

_"You tell me. You're the one with the red face."_

_It was true. She felt the heat on her cheeks. She crossed her arms, shoving up her milk-inflated breasts. Rhett glanced down at her cleavage. Her hand itched to slap the ogle right off his face. She flung her arms to her hips, her glass dangling from her fingertips. _

_"You're sick to even be going out with her. How is it to have sex with someone who did it for entertainment?"_

_"Do you really want to know?" he asked, unfazed and grinning. "I'll tell you, or you could just scrounge around for her old…performances. I'm sure they're available in VHS somewhere."_

_Scarlett shook her head. Nothing ever touched this one. Nothing she did, anyway. _

_"I'm sorry, Scar." He leaned in. The delicious smell that was Rhett buzzed in her nose. It made her forget how annoyed she was. Her body swayed toward his scent, toward him. His breath puffed along her neck. "Was that supposed to hurt my feelings?"_

_His lips were as close to her skin as possible without actually touching her. Her heart raced. Abruptly he stepped back. His eyes, his posture, his mouth mocked her. Scarlett snapped out of it. _

_"Fine. You don't care about your own reputation, but what about Bonnie's?"_

_All the fun in his face died. _

_"What about her reputation?"_

_"What do you think people will say about her dad dating some fame-whore ex-porn star? And what's worse, she has a kid of her own."_

_The muscles in his jaw flexed. He jammed his hands into his suit pockets. When he spoke it chilled Scarlett to the marrow. _

_"People are very sympathetic to penniless women who are pushed into unsavory lifestyles for the sake of their children, especially when they work their way up from the slums and into the middle class. I'd imagine they'd be less understanding of self-entitled rich girls who prostitute themselves for thrills and only keep their babies for spite."_

_Scarlett gasped. Rhett's words had punched her in the stomach. And the hits were still coming. _

_"Don't ever question my loyalty to Bonnie, Scarlett. Belle's a better mother than you on her worst day. I let you keep full custody and I didn't push it. But don't think for a second I did it for you. I didn't want my baby to become a bartering chip in some long, drawn-out court battle. Don't make me reevaluate things. We both know, I'd win." _

_His dark eyes coldly raked her up and down. He started to turn around, to dismiss her. Furious and hurt Scarlett lashed out._

_"I shouldn't have ever signed those papers. You aren't fit to be a father. Do you think any judge would award you anything if I actually told them what you do and who you are? Added on top of the fact that you'd be parading my daughter around some reality TV camera crew? Don't make _me_ reevaluate things. I wouldn't just win. I'd make sure you lost."_

_They stared at each other. A spark crackled in the empty space between them. Their entire exchange had been yelled in thunderous whispers. It threatened to snap into a raging argument. The crowd mulled all around, oblivious to the brewing electrical storm._

_Suddenly Gerald's brogue erupted over the din and through Scarlett's silent standoff with Rhett. She shot her eyes over to her father. Pork was holding Gerald's shoulder, trying to keep him seated and calm. Careen stood before them, with her hands splayed out, pleading. _

_"No, no daddy. I'm not mom. Mom didn't go to the beach with another guy. It's me Carreen…I just came back from Venezuela. I…I was on a mission."_

_Gerald roared and flailed. Carreen cowered. Ashley, Sam and Will hurried over to help. Dr. Meade zoomed out from nowhere. Scarlett couldn't see her father anymore, his stocky frame blocked by the wall of men. Within a few seconds his shouts quieted. The hum of voices and the rustle of movement soon filled the room. _

_Pain filled Scarlett's chest. Her heart ached. It throbbed. The grief washed through her, cleansing her of anger. She pulled her eyes away and looked at Rhett. Her lips parted, not to apologize but to move on. He spoke first. _

_"Sometimes I envy your father." His face was ice. "He'll never have to know what a slut his oldest daughter actually turned out to be." _

_Scarlett sucked in her breath. She thought she saw something break in Rhett's cold eyes, a fracture of remorse. But she couldn't be sure. Belle sauntered up to them right then, slinking her curvy frame against Rhett's side._

_"Here's your drink, dry as Vegas. It took awhile to convince Dilcey you wouldn't want champagne."_

_His eyes drifted away from Scarlett._

_"Thanks," he said, taking the tumbler.  
_

_He guzzled it down. Belle whispered into his ear. His eyes were on his empty glass. _

_Winded from the blow, Scarlett braced herself against the wall and watched. Over Rhett's shoulder she saw Charles laughing with his sister and nephew. Earlier in the day Mel had invited Bonnie and her to the Hamilton family reunion on the coast. Ashley wouldn't be able to come and Mel wanted an extra adult around. Scarlett had bummed it off, since it would be Rhett's weekend with Bonnie, and she knew she couldn't avoid Charles in a five-bedroom cabin for a week. All of a sudden, bumping into him—or any man other than the one in front of her—didn't sound so bad. _

_Scarlett took two deep breaths and straightened her spine. She downed her drink. It had lost all of its fizz. Her head lifted and her eyes narrowed on Rhett. _

_"You're not getting Bonnie this weekend." She gave him a look. "It's not up for discussion. We're going to the coast with Mel."_

_He pressed his lips together and nodded. _

_"What about the weekend after that?"_

_She flung her hair behind her shoulder and walked up to him._

_"I'll let you know." She turned to Belle and smiled. It was a breathtaking burst of freshness. It was completely manufactured. "Don't give him any treats, Belle, he wasn't a nice boy."_

_She pushed her way through them with a wave of her hand. Charles sneaked another glance at her and his laugh fell off his face. Scarlett winked as she approached him. He blushed. _

_The photographer grabbed her away from Charles only a moment later, to take a picture of Bonnie with her parents. Neither Rhett nor Scarlett apologized. Neither one brought up the subject of custody again. Neither one talked about their separate love lives again. The argument just blended in with all the others. A million things left unsaid, each lined and stacked up against each other, building an insurmountable wall. _

At the memory, some of the rush pulsed out of Scarlett's veins. She almost crumpled the picture before chucking it back onto the floor. It landed face up, mocking her. Perfect. Her hands squeezed the steering wheel. Before she screeched out of the Wilkes' driveway she glared at it one last time.

She drove the car on auto-pilot. Her muscles knew the way from Mel's place to hers, left turn here, right turn there, stop. Her mind drudged up questions and uncertainties. So many things, too many things, stood between them. And last night had added another layer, one with more sheeting and plaster than all the rest.

Nothing about Rhett made sense unless he cared about her. Right? He'd said so last night. He had even used the "L" word. Used it right before he attacked her. Her body remembered his brutality. Her lips remembered his vulnerability. Before she knew it, she was parked outside her condo.

The humidity slammed Scarlett as soon as she stepped out of the car. She tried to take a deep breath. Textured air coated her lungs and she coughed. She shot her eyes up to her floor. Things had to be smoother today. Things had to be easier. She stretched her arms, her nerves, and jogged into her high rise.

The elevator seemed to inch up. The walk to her door was a mile. She turned the lock and eased open the knob. The sun blinded her through her windows, blazing orange streaks across her vision. At first she thought she was alone. Her place was too quiet. But then she found him, slouched in a dining room chair with an empty pot of coffee in one hand, and a gun in other.

_Notes: Answers? Helen, Scarlett just meant it was her first time again with Rhett, not since Bonnie. Lawdy, Yes! I was thinking Melanie would be a Molly-Samantha mash up. Caroline, You got it. This was (partially) my version of the first birthday reputation bit, and some other scenes. _

_And again, I confuse with my notes. I have 3 chapters planned out, well now 2, as in I know what they're going to be. But I think there are probably a couple more after that. This next scene is one I've been picking at for awhile and to all those who asked, Yes. The spy stuff is finally going to be declassified. Da. Da. Da._

_Thanks for the reviews, and don't worry, I have your requests in mind...especially the 'steam' ones. Oh and thanks for putting up with my contrivances. I have a pattern to each chapter (the biggest is that I always start with a cold open line of dialogue) and it's made things harder, and easier to write in a formula.  
_


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20: This is (not) the end. **

_Previously on AGW:_

_Rhett abducting Scarlett and her being interrogated (10,11). Ashley talking about their lost youth and Archie finding them (16). Rhett visiting her drunk (16). Scarlett realizing something about Rhett after Mel's prayer and girl chat (18). Scarlett coming home to find Rhett with a gun in his hand, slouched at her table (19). _

_Question: If you're my insanity, why are you my clarity? If our love is tragedy, why are you my remedy? Answer: It's been written in the scars on our hearts that we're not broken, just bent. And we can learn to love again. (Okay so I had a bunch of songs as inspiration: Just Give Me A Reason, Pink. Stay, Rihanna. Clarity, Zedd. Jean Sibelius, Pohjola's Daughter. At last, Etta James...)_

_Key: Kryptonite is Superman's one weakness. It's sort of major. And if you haven't picked up, yup, I'm a big fan-girl-geek for the caped crusader. I think that's it. This chapter was too heavy for too much pop. You'll see..._

_Also, last chapter I showed their relationship at their worst. I chose the christening as opposed to the first birthday because I wanted it to be the first time they really had to be parents, without being a couple. Things get easier after a few birthdays and holidays. And Helen and others, I don't think Rhett was always honest with his barbs. He sometimes just wanted to be mean, to make her feel for a moment his pain. Misery loves company._

_One quick flashback to bring you up to speed on their relationship right before Ashley's party. _

_Sorry for the long note. Thanks for all those who review and read. Really.  
_

* * *

_"Hey."_

_"Hey," Rhett whispered back. _

_He stood in Scarlett's doorway with Bonnie asleep on his shoulder. Bonnie's black hair was matted against her face, spiraling over her chubby cheek like a tattoo. Her nose whistled and her lips were parted. She looked utterly exhausted. _

_"What'd you'all do today? Run a baby marathon?"_

_"Might as well have." _

_He shifted Bonnie in his arms and smiled. Their baby's mouth lolled open and her lashes fluttered. She mewed into a snore and Rhett went on, his drawl even softer. _

_"We hit the zoo and the aquarium. You should have seen her at the petting zoo. She went wild over the ponies."_

_"I'll bet." _

_Scarlett smirked and scratched her neck. These doorstep switches were always a little awkward, especially when she'd already cozied into her pajamas and taken off her bra. She crossed her arms. Rhett's eyes were almost closed, his gaze slanted downward to admire his sleeping almost two-year old. _

_It was silent in the hallway. Not the silence of strangers or friends, a noisy silence. Sometimes Scarlett wanted to blurt out all the things buzzing in her head: Do you remember we used to talk? We used to fight? We used to care enough to hate? But the unsaid words just turned to ringing in her ears. She cleared her throat and shook her head. _

_"Uh…before I forget, you know we changed the venue for her birthday party?"_

_"Yeah, I got your email. Forecast says rain?"_

_"Yeah."_

_He glanced up and, Scarlett was pretty sure, actually saw her for the first time since she'd opened the door. His eyes did the old run up and down, over and through her clothes and body. Her arms were still folded over her chest. She fidgeted with the frays on her sleeves. _

_"Why is your shirt wet?"_

_"Oh." Of course he would notice. "My toilet's running. I was trying to fix it."_

_He nodded but didn't reply. She rubbed her hand across her collarbone, uncomfortable under his glinting gaze. _

_"Do you want me to take a look?"_

_"No," she said, a little too quickly. She smiled. "No, Charles is coming over in the morning."_

_Rhett made a sound somewhere between a mumble and a grunt. His eyes were spinning tires, debating something._

_"Come on, Scarlett. Let me lay Bonnie down in her crib and I'll just take a peek." _

_She chewed on her cheek._

_"I can hear it hissing from here. Why sleep with the noise if you don't have to?"_

_She bit her lip and studied his face. What was the harm?_

_"Okay."_

_It only took him ten minutes to lay Bonnie in her crib without waking her up, fix the howling toilet and unclog the drain in the sink. Scarlett crept down the hall, just as he was putting the lid onto the toilet's tank. His back was toward her and his shirt had come untucked. She started to grin, to tease him about his plumber pose, but then she saw it: the handle to his semi-automatic. _

_Rhett must have seen her face change in the mirror. In a blink, he'd turned around, his gun balancing on his palm. He didn't wait for her to ask. _

_"Yes," he said, unlocking and locking the trigger. "I always carry it."_

_"Why?"_

_He looked at his gun, and then looked at her. His eyes held too many secrets. He chose one of them. _

_"Control."_

Standing in front of him now, Rhett swollen and stale from drink, Scarlett didn't think he looked like he had much of anything, least of all control.

His head hung down and he hadn't said anything but he must know she was here. She took a soft step into the dining room. He ran his thumb along the gun's barrel and raised it toward his face. The metal handle caught the tangerine sunlight streaming in behind her. The reflection blinded her and in the shifting light she panicked.

"No! Don't do it Rhett," she screamed, flinging herself across the table.

Her stomach smacked into the table's edge. The coffee pot tumbled to the ground. Her outstretched fingers grazed his forearm. She grasped at his skin.

"Don't do it!"

He stared at her. Something in his gaze stopped her heart. Not with the stutter of a breathless thrill but the sinking deadening of hope. She pulled her hand into her chest and slid back into the nearest chair. Her handprint glowed as a sweaty ghost on the table top. He bent down and picked up the coffee pot. It thudded hollowly, glass on wood. The gun gleamed at her from his limp hand.

"If I was going to kill myself I would have had the courtesy to do it in your bathtub," he said heavily. "And before you came home."

She couldn't even nod. His somber gaze went past her, the sun turning his black eyes brown. It made her think of Melanie, of her whispered prayer on their behalf and the storm of feeling that had followed. But none of that surging wind touched Scarlett now. She was in the center of it all; the eerie calm of the eye with no way out.

Rhett tossed the gun into the air and Scarlett jumped. Her gasp blended with the uneven clank as the gun hit the table. It spun as a bottle across the slick surface, stopping with the barrel pointing at her. Was it her turn to speak the truth or dare Rhett to?

"You're home sooner than I thought you would be." Rhett's voice had changed. It was cool and light. "Why didn't you stay longer at Will's?"

"Will's?"

"Isn't that where you went? You wouldn't want to wake up Mammy and Careen is out of the country. Who's left? You don't have many close friends."

"What about Mel?"

"What about Mel?" he asked, not even a flicker of a grin on his lips.

"She's…I didn't even think of calling anyone else."

Rhett lifted his eyebrows, interested or impressed. Scarlett wasn't sure. The glimmer of something other than nothing on his face stoked that vanishing certainty in her. Truth it was. She inhaled through her nose and straightened her back. It was now or never.

"I stayed with her, or started to…" She struggled to find the words, digging her nails into her thighs and raking her teeth along her bottom lip. The gun's unflinching barrel taunted her, an unblinking pupil of fear. "It's been such a long night. I haven't slept much. I couldn't. After I told Mel about…"

"About me?"

She nodded. His mouth hardened but his voice was soft.

"You told her what I did to you last night?"

"No."

"No?"

"I told her what happened last night."

"So you told her what I did to you last night." His eyelids went down. "Let's not debate semantics."

He had been so calm that she shrunk back when he suddenly rose, exhaling a mouthful of expletives, and turned around. He placed his hands on the back of the chair. His knuckles and fingertips were white as he clenched the wood. He muttered something, his face directed at the ground. She couldn't hear him.

"What?"

He looked up and she leaned back. She had seen a face like that before. The face of a man who has broken; someone who has shattered from the inside out, not a scratch or a scuff mark on his body, not puncture on his skin, but who is bleeding internally. It was the same face her father had worn the day he was admitted to the hospital.

"I said," Rhett repeated in a daze, "in for a penny, in for a pound."

Frantically she searched his torn up expression. What did he mean? What did that mean?

He ran his hands through his hair. She could see the tremble in his arms and the sweat on his hairline. Wrinkles that she'd never noticed creased the skin around his mouth and eyes. Rhett looked like an addict, a Hollywood star whose good looks and verve had been wasted on drugs. He flung himself back into the chair and leveled a blank gaze at her wild eyes. The madness had disappeared, leaving a quiet fatigue on his puffy, handsome face.

"I've thought for years how ironic it was that I met you the same night I went back to the CIA, discovering my kryptonite when I'd just agreed to be a superhero."

He laughed, quick and dark. The bitter grin jeered himself and the world. Scarlett's overloaded mind had latched onto only one thing.

"Back? When you went _back_ to the CIA? When were you ever away?"

Rhett scratched his day-old beard. The sandpaper sound was muffled by his sigh.

"I forget where the lies begin with you. You thought I was kicked out of college—I wasn't. I was recruited by the government and worked in covert operations for them until I couldn't take the bureaucratic idiots who ran the show—or the pay for that matter. I got out and started my shipping business. On the night I met you, I was drawn back into the game. John Wilkes set it up. He was a big wig at Langley in his day, a good man. He's the reason his son was chosen—fresh out of training—for an operation he wasn't weathered for."

Rhett paused and dragged his shaking hand through his hair again.

"I shouldn't tell you this. I shouldn't have to tell you this. You should already know how much I loved you. Why else would I become friends with a girl half my age? Why would I put national security in jeopardy? I risked everything. Everything. And the one thing I tried not to gamble on, I still lost."

He pinched the bridge of his nose and swept his hands across his eyebrows.

"That night, the first time I met you…I've replayed it in my mind so many times it's hard to dissect fantasy from fact. I watched you for a long time before you noticed me. Maybe I loved you then, maybe I just wanted you. Either way, it was illegal. Whatever it was, whatever you were, you got under my skin. You were so young, so full of all the things I'd abandoned or had taken away from me." His bloodshot eyes drilled into her. "I had to stop myself from…seducing you in the library. I had to stop myself from contacting you until you'd turned eighteen. I've always stopped myself where you're concerned. Until last night. I couldn't stop."

Scarlett sat there, forgetting to blink or even breathe. Love. He had said it again. He wasn't drunk. He wasn't joking. And he wasn't happy. Each syllable of his declaration had dropped like a dead weight. _Loved._ Not love. It was in the past. It was an echo. He had loved her then. She remembered that then, she remembered that first moment. It was the same night Ashley had evoked only yesterday, painting the picture of her youth with his round drawl and warm voice. The Wilkes' barbecue. The break up with Ashley. The meet and greet with Rhett. It had been a watercolor memory on the porch last night, but this morning, in the chill of Rhett's confession, it bled of its brightness and faded to sepia hues.

Her own baited declaration fizzled on her tongue. She shuddered and, maybe it was the trick of the morning's glow, but she thought a shadow of a grin moved over Rhett's mouth. In a blink the shadow was gone. He drummed his fingers against the table and spoke.

"Ashley should never have been given that assignment in the first place. He was too green." He beat his fingers, once, twice. "Hell, even I was too green. One of my business associates was the target. He was a known arms dealer, among other things. At the time I was reinstated, I had only conducted business with his front operations but I had an immediate in into his illegal endeavors—I started with the small stuff, human and drug trafficking, and finally was able to weasel my way into the big time deals—guns and missiles."

Scarlett had a million things whizzing through her mind but she was too scared to grab at any of them. Afraid he'd stop opening up. Afraid she'd miss this one chance to finally understand the cause of some of the insanity in her life for the past several years. His voice droned on in a dry, dusty melody.

"It was supposed to be a short mission. A little more refined than a smash and grab, collar and cuff them job, but a simple, short op. It wasn't. As you witnessed for yourself more than three years ago, La Faim—"

"Who?" Scarlett croaked.

Rhett stopped talking and ran his bleary eyes up and down her shoulders and neck.

"La Faim. The man who fractured your jaw and wanted to torture you into giving him answers you didn't have." His ashen expression warmed for a second. "The man I finally was able to kill right before Bonnie was born."

Some constant, throbbing worry in the back of Scarlett's mind snapped apart.

"He's dead?"

"Yes," Rhett said after a pause. "No one could…"

He glanced down at his lap and flexed his large hands. They'd stopped trembling. Scarlett had no trouble imagining him wrapping them around someone's throat, and crushing it.

"La Faim was totally ruthless and clinically paranoid—a bad combination. You should know. He became obsessed with you. I knew he was tracking my movements—he never completely bought my cover—but he didn't try and bug me until you and I became friends. I think the only reason he didn't shoot me was to somehow stay connected to you. Of course, the feds investigating me helped. Hats off to them for due diligence…and for finally backing off when we were able to gather enough intel to end La Faim's operation."

Rhett's wooden voice winnowed into a sigh. Scarlett and he stared at each other for a moment. Birds and cars whistled outside. The world was waking up.

Scarlett flicked her eyes to the clock across the way in the living room. She noticed the glass shards and dried spatters of alcohol on the wall. She would have to clean it up before Bonnie came home in a few hours. She would have to do too many things before Bonnie came home.

"I'm out now," Rhett blandly supplied. She looked back at him, wary. "I have been since Bonnie's christening. So is Ashley. Did he tell you?"

Rhett's dark eyes rippled without emotion, steady on her face.

"Yes."

"Good for him." He shrugged. "Wilkes wasn't cut out for a double life. He can't see the world in shades or the truth in degrees. It's all or nothing for him. I think that's why he wants you almost as much as he wants to avoid you. You're that one wrench in his cogs. The would-be mistress to a monogamist man. That itch he just needs to scratch one last time."

The ripples in Rhett's gaze changed.

"But some bites itch more if you scratch them."

His look froze her blood. She whipped her head away. She remembered why she had sped home and rushed up to the apartment. It seemed so stupid now. So reckless. The gun still glared at her. She glared back. She flashed her eyes over to Rhett.

"Why did you kidnap me that night? Why did you drug me? Did that Lafim—"

"La Faim, Scarlett. La-Fa-im." Rhett's voice had about as much inflection as bee's hum. "I told you I had to and he told you why. And it goes back to Georgia's next congressman—you kissed Ashley and La Faim didn't believe you weren't an agent. I had to bring you in, but in my own way—and get you out before any real damage was done. It was tricky, to say the least. La Faim couldn't recognize me or my years of work would have been for nothing."

Her sudden surge of anger was already weakening. Her forehead collapsed into lines of confusion.

"But that night—when the smoke started—did you save him too? Did you get him out?" The next question spewed from her mouth before she could stop it, tainted with accusation. "Whose side are you really on, Rhett?"

His eyes grew alert. He leaned across the table and grabbed her wrist. His hard fingers twisted her skin. She flipped her head away. She could feel Rhett's powers of perception worming their way through her skull and into her grey matter. He loosened his hold.

"Look at me."

His voice was almost kind. It frightened her more but she couldn't resist seeing if any actual tenderness softened his face. His eyes were too dark to tell. He dropped her wrist and stood up, leaning against the closest wall.

"That's what Ashley told you. He convinced you I wasn't on your side. That's why you called off the engagement. I saw him storm in with the FBI that night. I wondered if he recognized me. I guess I have my answer."

He laughed so sharply it cut her.

"So Mr. Wilkes violated his vow and told a civilian about an interagency manhunt, all in the name of saving you from me. Has he since told you he no longer thinks I'm a mole? Has he broken protocol to exonerate me? To vindicate me for what he saw me do in North Korea to those men? Gotta hand it to him. He's good at spinning the truth to fit his needs. Maybe I will vote for him come November."

He laughed again and finally Scarlett couldn't handle it. She couldn't take one more second of his apathy or his sarcasm or his meaningless secrets. She looked down at her wrists. The skin was red, raw from his recent grip.

Before another exhale, before another sigh, she shot up onto her feet and slapped him as hard as she could. He shoved his hands into his pockets, barely flinching. And so she slapped him again. And again. And again. The last one drew blood. He ran his tongue along the cut in his lip and glanced the trickle away with his thumb. He looked at her, dead eyes, dead expression.

Her chest swelled high and low, quick and hard. Sweat dripped down her back. Tears ran down her face. Her palm stung from his rough stubble.

"Do you want to know why I came back so soon? I wanted to tell you that I thought I was falling in love with you. That maybe I've been in love with you for years. But I don't even know why I thought that. I must be crazy. I know whose side you're on." She wiped the sheen of tears off her cheeks. "Your own."

She sobbed then, her throat constricting with despair. She swayed and Rhett moved to catch her but she shoved him off, stumbling into the wall and steadying herself against it. The glint of the gun's metal pierced through to her wet, fuzzy vision. Gasping for air, for release she lunged for it. The cool handle soothed her sore palm. She spun around. Her arms shook as she lifted the gun and aimed it at Rhett's heart.

"Maybe I should just shoot you. Maybe I'd be a hero. Maybe La Faim's gone because you wanted to replace him as lord of the psychopaths. And you've always told me you find a way to get what you want. Tell me Rhett were you as drunk when you killed him as you were last night when you raped me?"

She screamed this and instantly regretted it. Things had happened too fast. Her hopes and her fears had crashed together, flying at breakneck speeds. She wanted to lower the gun and crawl away. But she was stuck, holding onto nothing but a weapon she didn't know how to use.

Rhett's expression was unreadable. Stone. Blood from his lip dribbled down his neck. He didn't break eye contact as he closed the small gap between them. His hands folded over hers and he forced her to press the gun directly into his chest.

"There's only one question that matters in my world—can I live with myself? That's it. And trust me, I've done some terrible things—all in the name of my country, whatever you think or Ashley Wilkes believed—that few could live with." She let out a strangled cry as he abruptly dug the barrel deeper into his ribs. "But I can't live with what I did to you last night. So go ahead. Do us both a favor and pull the trigger."

Her arms were still shaking, her entire body starting to convulse. The tears in her eyes had smeared his blank face into some modern art mess. But through the swirling lines she saw something in his gaze, felt something in his warm, brutal hands that gave her strength.

"I didn't mean that Rhett," she said. "I didn't…I don't know what last night was, but I didn't mean to say that."

His hands gently squeezed hers. Her muscles relaxed, her limbs stilled. She blinked and her vision cleared. For the second time this morning, her heart stopped. A single tear was sliding down Rhett's tan, haggard face. It was strangely beautiful. She wanted to catch it on her fingertip. She almost smiled at him. He almost smiled at her, the blood finally clotting on his swollen lip. Gashes do heal. Wounds do seal. And then the stillness snapped.

"Scarlett, shoot me."

Shocked she jerked her head and tried to yank the gun away. His hands tightened into a vice. She couldn't move. His tear splashed onto her wrist. It was cold. His voice was colder.

"I can't shoot myself. I don't have it in me. But I promise you, if it were anyone else, I would hunt them, I would find them and I would kill them."

"No!"

"Do it."

"No!"

They were locked together, their eyes, their hands, their lives. And she knew, the storm sweeping her up again and throwing her into its harsh embrace, she loved him. He was the broken one. He was the one who would unbreak her. The wind knocked out of her lungs.

"No, Rhett," she whispered, breathless. "No."

He searched her face. He read her, read her like he always had. And for the first time she was glad he could scan her thoughts, decipher her feelings with laser accuracy. That chaos in his eyes zeroed down. He pushed away and the gun clattered to the hardwood floor.

"Do you still want to tell me you're falling—"

"No," she said, stepping toward him. His body brushed against her clothes. Her clothes brushed against his body. "I've fallen."

It was nearly immediate, it was infinitesimal. Life revived his sharp features. A flame sparked in his empty eyes. A heat spiked up between them. He didn't grab her and tear into her with his lips as she half hoped he would. Instead he raised his hand to her face and caressed her jaw. The touch was so faint, it was almost a promise.

"You are crazy, you know." His other hand cupped the back of her neck. "But so am I."

He kissed her, slowly drawing her to him. It was tender, tentative. She could feel the apology, the uncertainty in his lips. The words he hadn't said. The one maybe he couldn't, not yet. She hadn't. Her arms wound around his back. She tried to prove to him and herself that she had forgiven him. This was her chance to come clean. She raised herself up on her toes and pulled him closer. He tensed. She melted. Her mouth demanded he respond. And at last he did.

Their kiss didn't last long. But when she pulled away she could barely breathe. She didn't think she could feel that way again. It was something she thought she'd lost, something maybe she'd never really had. Her knees gave out and she crumpled down beside the gun. She concentrated on inhaling and exhaling. In. Out. In. Out.

Rhett sank down beside her. His arm rubbed against her shoulder. His hairs tickled her skin. From the corner of her eye she saw him blot his fingers against his fat lip.

"Do you think you could get me an ice pack or something? You really let me have it."

She started to laugh, a hysterical throatiness to it. Rhett's deep chuckle joined with the raspy sound. Bonnie was screwed. Both her parents were messed up. Scarlett combed her fingers through her hair and looked at him.

"You're okay with me shooting you but you can't handle a little cut? Retirement's made you soft You need to find a new enemy."

Rhett's hand fell to his side, and he half-frowned, that emptiness in his expression had gone up in smoke. So too had the laughter. His eyes still harbored secrets. But she was too tired to wonder what they might be. She sighed, mentally repeating the words, "It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay." The relief was temporary, brittle as a blanket made out of dried leaves. Rhett's next words ripped it away. It dissolved before she could catch it.

"I have found a new enemy, or they've found me. Just before you came someone sent me a text with Archie's picture of Ashley and you attached. It was from a blocked number. It said, "Do you believe in coincidence?"

"What does that mean?" she asked, her hand instinctively reaching for the gun.

Rhett beat her to the quick. He snatched it up and unloaded the cartridge. The bullets rained down onto their laps. They rolled loudly across the planks of wood.

"It means someone wants me to believe the dead can walk." He picked up one of the bullets and circled it between his thumb and index finger. "It means, I'm glad you didn't shoot me. It's time you learned how to handle a gun."


	21. Chapter 21

**_Chapter 21: Eavesdroppers and Packrats _**

_Dedicated to LawdyMissScarlett and O__ndine. Hope it's not too choppy or messy.  
_

_ Previously on AGW: Ashley dumps Scarlett (1); Rhett tells Scarlett—almost—everything (21)_

_ Question: Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf? Answer: Not a single teenager I know. _

* * *

_"What just happened? Seriously. What just happened?" Scarlett screamed into her hands. _

_She dragged her fingers down her face and stared at them. Great. They were black with mascara. Now everyone would know she'd been bawling. The thought of Stu or Brent—or worse Suellen or Melanie—finding out that Ashley had just dumped her cranked her hurt into rage. Pure rage. _

_No one ended it with her. No one went back to their old girlfriend after her. No one broke her heart. No one. _

_The trophies of the Wilkes' champion dog glinted at her in their case. Gold caps in some overhyped rapper's mouth. She growled, the sound exploding from her gut, and ripped open the latch. She threw her hands across the shelves, sweeping them off in kettle drum crashes. Bang. Bang. Bang. She reached the end. The one Ashley had knocked off and put back in its prominent place, above the cabinet, stared down at her. Ashley. Who did he think he was? No one messed around with her and got away with it. _

_She snatched the prized Best In Show cup off its pedestal, and whipping around like a shot-putter, hurled it across the room. It wobbled helter-skelter through the air, barely edging over the top of the back of the huge sofa, and smashed into the marble fireplace. Bits of stone burst into dust. A crack appeared in the expensive decoration. _

_Scarlett panted, a wicked smirk on her lips. Her muscles were starting to relax and her breath to cool when from the depths of the sofa she heard a voice. It was a thick drawl, the kind that was fading from the South, the kind that slickered over the ears and dropped warm liquid into the veins. It was lead to her. _

_"I hope that was the last one." _

_A man stood up. His hair was black. His face was tan and his teeth were white. Those were the only things she would be able to remember later on. Humiliation gooped down on her. It was in her eyes, her ears and her head. It would forever brownout this memory. _

_The man's smile grew as he loped around the couch and approached her. She gaped at him as her brain sputtered and shorted. _

_"I'd hate to need stitches before I saw any real action."_

_The way his Bill Compton voice oozed over the word action sounded dirty, secretive. It blipped into her dumbstruck, crashing mind. Her senses rebooted and so did her anger, and her mouth. _

_"What are you? Some kind of pervert spy who gets his rocks off eavesdropping on teenagers?"_

_Scarlett folded her arms across her chest and pouted her best pretty-ugly glower. To her shock—and annoyance—the guy just laughed. And hard. She darted her eyes away to the pile of trophies at her feet, growing more and more uncomfortable as he chortled. _

_Who was he? She'd never seen him around the Wilkes' place before, but Mr. Wilkes always had big, lavish 'barbecues' with unfamiliar faces. She never paid much attention to those outside her group of friends and neighbors. And of course she'd only had an eye for one person tonight—but she wouldn't think about him. She hated herself for not hating him. Tears threatened to prickle again in the corner of her eyes, depression to trickle in through the fury. _

_She glanced up at Chuckles the Clown. He'd stopped laughing. He was watching her. She wriggled. Something about this guy made her want to do one of two things: run to her daddy (Please, please let Gerald be too drunk to notice how long she'd been gone from the poolside) or run at him and comb her hands through his hair. His clothes were designer and he was good looking, maybe he did Just For Men shampoo commercials. She flushed at her hormonal, ADHD thoughts._

_The guy casually leaned against the empty trophy case and grinned, like he had freaking read her mind. _

_ "I'd be lying if I said I was sorry I was forced to listen to your discussion with your, er, friend," he said. "It's been years since I indulged my secret obsession with telenovelas."_

_"I'm glad I could amuse you," she flared. "Maybe I could have used my Spanish if you'd given me some warning. I failed the class but I think I remember one word at least. Cha—"_

_"Creo que recuerdo màs, mi linda," he interrupted. _

_"Makes you feel special, does it? Showing off to some girl half your age?"_

_"Showing off? I would prefer to think of it as backing off."_

_His face fell into smooth lines, Scarlett's into confused ones. WTF. Who was this guy? Did he always talk in riddles? He might as well have been speaking Spanish—she probably would have understood him better._

_"Look," she spread her hands up, "I don't know who you are or why you were hiding out in Mr. Wilkes' library, and honestly I don't really want to know why a grown man's hanging out in here, alone and in the dark. But what I do want to know is if you can keep your mouth shut, because the last thing I need tonight is for one more thing to go all schizo on me."_

_"Schizo?"_

_"Schizo. As in postal. As in…" _

_Her voice faltered but she wasn't going to cry again. It was bad enough knowing this guy had already heard her total breakdown. She wouldn't let him actually see her fall apart. She lifted her chin. Her eyes stilled into deep green pools._

_"It's been a long night, okay? I'd just appreciate it if you forgot everything…sir."_

_She added that last bit a little late. Mammy was always pounding into her how flippant she was with adults. Maybe he'd appreciate the courtesy. She could tell her attempt at politeness had caused some effect on him. He'd made a face. Not really good or bad, but different. _

_His black eyes flicked up and down her. Her insides squirmed. He definitely wasn't disapproving of her way too skimpy sun dress—the white-eyelet number that she'd worn to rattle Ashley's cage was just see-through enough to show off her forest green bikini underneath. In fact, Mr. Creeper seemed way, way too approving of her outfit, and especially all that skin it barely covered up. _

_Her insides flailed some more. She hugged herself. He locked his intense gaze on her face. _

_"He's not worth it," he said conversationally. "Your friend, as you call him. He's not worth it."_

_"How do you know? You don't even know him."_

_"True, but any guy who'd throw you over for someone else isn't worth your time—and certainly not your sixteen-year-old tears."_

_He'd paused when he had mentioned her age and Scarlett felt a nip of worry. Technically she was as out of bounds to Ashley as she was to this man—who had to be in his late twenties or early thirties. Yet another reason why this guy had to keep his mouth shut. No one wanted a proactive stranger bringing the cops and child welfare into this. _

_"Ashley is a really good man, solid." She batted her eyes and dimpled. "We've known each other for years. He didn't take advantage of me, or anything." _

_He raised his eye brows. She dropped the sweet sixteen act. _

_"Whatever. He's definitely not the type of person who'd listen in on someone else's private conversation and then laugh about it to their face."_

_The guy's grin returned—white caps and all._

_"No but from the little I've seen—or heard of him—neither is he the type to destroy an entire room in a tantrum and not even apologize for nearly lobbing someone's head off with a golden urn."_

_She glared. He winked. She reacted.  
_

_"You're a dick."_

_Scarlett started to turn around. John Doe D-bag could clean up her mess—she needed to get back to the party. But he said her name and stopped her retreat. Any even-footing she'd believed to have achieved crumbled away. He'd called her name like he knew her, like they were longtime friends—and it was more than that richness his heavy drawl slathered on it. Something entirely more.  
_

_She looked at him. She remembered her face was caked in mascara and dried tears. All her humiliation dumped back on top of her. _

_He took two steps closer to her. The canine booty shined down at their feet. The reflection danced in his eyes, and hers._

_"I won't retaliate by name-calling, even if you are clearly informed enough to know the difference between male and female genitalia, and their less than scientific terms." _

_She gasped at his very pointed peek down her body. _

_"But I will try and give you some grown-up…advice." His face grew almost serious. "Be happy that your first won't be your last."_

_It took Scarlett a few seconds to fully understand his comment. And before she could think, she talked, flipping her hair back and bopping her shoulders. _

_"He wasn't my first, actually."_

_She puckered her lips and whipped around, stomping through the glimmering, doggy litter. Her hand grabbed at the knob. She glanced back at the man. He spoke. The buttery glamour of his speech glued her to the spot. _

_"Scarlett I promise you, he won't be your last, either."_

_He flashed a dazzling, vampiric smile at her. She had that same conflicting urge to run at him, and from him. Well she wasn't any Sookie, and she sure as hell wasn't a Bella. His laugh echoed as she ran down the hallway. _

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Scarlett looked down at her toddler, who was frantically tugging at her shirt. Water puddled in the rims of Bonnie's big, blue eyes. Her mouth was scrunched up into a rosebud of wrinkles. Scarlett's eyelet dress—the one she'd never been able to give up and that had just sparked her spaced-out trip down memory lane—hung loosely on her daughter's tiny, apple frame. The hem draped around her like a wedding gown's train—perfect since she'd dug it out of her mom's closet to play 'Cinderella' dress up. Her huge teddy bear (moonlighting as a prince) lurked behind in the doorway, his arms and torso stuffed into one of Scarlett's maternity suit jackets.

"Sorry baby, mommy got lost in thought."

"Well come back. I don't want you lost. I want you home."

Scarlett smiled and shook her head. Almost three-year-olds were even more literal than she was.

"Was there something you wanted?" she asked, finishing folding the towel that was half-creased in her arm and placing it in the pile of clean laundry on her bed. She turned her attention back to her daughter.

Bonnie's pudgy hands dropped her shirt and she stepped back.

"Come play with me. Ple-ease"

Her chin started to wobble. Scarlett caved.

"What do you want me to be?"

Her daughter beamed.

"My fairy mother."

Scarlett grabbed a blue towel from off the pile of laundry and playfully swatted Bonnie with it.

"Faker," she said, wrapping the towel around her shoulders. "And it's fairy godmother."

Bonnie giggled and ran—tripping and waddling—over to her bear. She dragged him into the center of the room, refusing any help.

"We get married now," she commanded.

They had been playing for only a few minutes, Scarlett blasting 'Bipptiy Boppity Boo' from her iPhone and waltzing with Bonnie and the enormous teddy bear when she noticed a man's shadowy outline creeping along her hallway. Her heart shriveled and her blood gelled. She reached for Bonnie but at that moment her daughter bounded away.

"Daddy!" she squealed.

Rhett knelt down in the doorway and caught his leaping daughter in his arms.

"Hey Bonnie-boo." He hugged and tickled her. Her laughter chimed, a peal of bells. Scarlett sank down into the bear's chest, clutching her neck. Blindly she turned off the music.

"I knocked," Rhett said, hesitating at the bedroom door, with Bonnie slung around his back.

"Wasn't it locked?"

"Not many doors are locked from me."

"Right."

Her eyes traveled behind him. A duffle bag and a pillow were wedged against the wall. She raised her guarded gaze to his face. He was showered and clean shaven but the edges of his eyes and face were still rough. The gash from this morning's assault marred his full lips. It was faint, not faded.

"What you doing here daddy?" Bonnie asked, sliding off his back and craning up her neck.

Rhett's eyes stayed on Scarlett for a moment. She didn't know what he had seen, or what he was looking for. She didn't know what she had wanted him to see. He grinned down at his daughter.

"You know how you have sleepovers at my house?"

"Yes."

"Well tonight I'm having a sleepover at your house."

Bonnie sucked in her breath. Gleeful and giggly.

"Now, Bonnie boo, if you go into the living room, there's a surprise waiting for you."

No need to tell her twice. She screeched in delight and pattered around his legs and down the hall. She only ran into a wall once.

Scarlett heard Bonnie find her present—a new doll judging by the pitch and volume of the scream. In five minutes her daughter might remember she was alone, ten if the doll had come with enough accessories. Scarlett smirked, picking at the lint on the teddy bear's arm. She knew Rhett was still in the doorway, watching her. Her shallow smile slipped away.

"I'm sleeping on the couch," he said.

That voice—he could have been reading off a pizza menu. It told her nothing. She nodded, her eyes still on the bear's fuzz.

"I think that's a good idea. It's a comfortable couch."

The silence was so deep and the break so long that she had to look up. He hadn't moved. His eyes teemed with…

Bonnie yelled for him and he turned his head, telling her he was coming. But he didn't go immediately. He paused, his hand on the oak door frame, and stared back at Scarlett.

"I like Bonnie's dress," he said. He beat his palm twice against the wood and sighed. His gaze warmed. "I liked it better on you."

She smiled and he winked. Bonnie hollered for him again and he jogged—for the first time not away. Just down the hall.

_Key (because I loaded this one with references, since she's so young, again): Bill Compton and Sookie Stackhouse are from True Blood, about vampires in the modern American South. Sookie's a mortal, Bill Compton's a vampire. Bella's the mortal damsel in Twilight. (Yes, there's a theme…) Telenovelas are Latin soap operas. Just For Men's a dye shampoo for guys going grey. WTF is 'what the "freak"' in texting slang. Rhett says "I believe I can remember more, my pretty."(At least that's what I think. My Spanish is pretty rudimentary and so I double-checked with Google.)_

_Note: _

_Oh I think it will take some time for things to really iron out..._

_The next chapter will not be a flashback, but a lesson for the future. It was fun to go back into young Scarlett's mind. She's so much snappier, lots of pep and not much filter. And to contrast that with the woman she became post-kidnapping and Bonnie. _

_Thanks for all the kind reviews, if you do or don't sign in. _

_Also I've decided to go ahead and finish this before I update again on Rosier. I only have a couple chapters left there but I want to finish this. Hopefully before I travel again. We'll see. _

_Cheers. _


	22. Chapter 22

_Chapter 22: The Good Old Days of the Present_

_Previously on AGW: Melanie believes in Scarlett (18); Rhett comes back to sleepover (21); Rhett tells Scarlett she needs to learn how to use a gun (20)_

_Key: Katie Couric is a perky talk show host. PTA is a parent-teacher organization and a stereotype of an American suburban parent. _

_Question: Who rushes in? Answer: Wise men say fools do._

_Warning: A very little steam. Lawdy, it actually worked out better this way. _

_Dedicated to Ondine. _

* * *

"You're nicer to her than you are to me."

"Are you going to shoot me because of it?"

Scarlett looked down at the gun—or Glock or Browning—or whatever it was called and stopped aiming it at Rhett's chest. She set it on the board and flipped her ear muffs around her neck. The shooting range was essentially empty; except for a grizzly guy a few stalls over and a PTA mom at the very end of the line. She didn't bother to lower her voice.

"Are you going to admit it?"

Rhett narrowed his eyes before taking off his own ear muffs. He casually leaned across her body and locked her gun's trigger, his arm brushing her bare shoulder. His sea mint scent swirled around her head. He stepped back and slanted against the stall's wall.

"Admit? I don't know if it's anything I need to admit." He frowned. "This is why your pants have been twisted all morning?"

Scarlett blew out her breath, her bangs fanning in the sudden wind. So he had noticed. Ever since they had dropped Bonnie off at Melanie's for a play date she had been giving Rhett the cold shoulder, but he hadn't even tugged up his collar for comfort. He'd just breezed along like everything was sunshine and roses. Clearly his indifference had been an act.

"I can't remember you ever telling me you liked my hair cut," she said.

"Short hair looks good on Mel," he replied. "Don't you think so?"

Scarlett jerked her head and rolled her eyes.

"That's beside the point."

"Are you jealous?"

"No," she scoffed.

Her breath of hesitation had been enough to uncover the lie. His tongue peeked out as he flicked it along his top teeth. The sunlight shifted in his black eyes. The intensity in them deepened.

"If I am nicer to Mel, it's because she's nicer—not just to me, but to everyone. She even hands out lemonade to the paparazzi camping out in her lawn."

"You don't have to tell me what a good person my best friend is." Scarlett's hands flashed up. "Trust me, I know."

For the last three weeks Melanie had proven her worth, and her loyalty. She had been going on all the local talk shows and speaking with any reporter, defending her husband and her friend, disarming the critics and cynics with her wholesome charm. She was a young Katie Couric, only Southern and sweeter. Scarlett was impressed with (and a little envious of) Melanie's easy way with the press and public. Without breaking a stride or smile she had almost single-handedly bumped Ashley back up in the polls, her influence had even pushed some business Scarlett's way.

Scarlett sighed and smeared some sweat off her face. The range was outdoors. The late July sun was melting into the horizon but the summer heat still seared her skin. She put one hand on her hip, focused back on Rhett, and waited for him to reply.

"Melanie doesn't think she's beautiful," he drawled at last, clamping back on his ear muffs. "You know you are."

He straightened up and shoved her gun into her hand. She gripped the handle but Rhett didn't let go of the barrel. His eyes ran over her face.

"And even if it weren't true, you'd still think it." He dropped the barrel. "Now shoot. Just imagine the target is me. I'm sure that will improve your aim."

She glared and pulled up her ear muffs. Steadying the gun with both hands, she squinted, unlocked the trigger and followed Rhett's advice—the target morphed into his grinning face. As usual, he was right. Her aim did improve.

The sun slowly dissolved into the trees. Scarlett lost count of how many rounds she had fired. Rhett was a relentless teacher, tweaking and correcting every minor detail. Her stance. Her grip. Her focus. Her arms grew heavy and the sweat dripped down her back.

Twilight finally settled in with its somber hues and the owner of the range came out. He yelled to Rhett that he had closed everything up and was leaving. Scarlett raised her eyebrows and Rhett shrugged. "Good buddy," he mouthed.

A few security lights hummed on, dusting the night in a bluish glow. Scarlett set her gun down and flexed her fingers. She tore off her ear muffs and looked around. They were alone. Goose bumps popped up on her flesh, despite the suffocating warmth of the weather.

"Shouldn't we go too?" she asked. "It's getting late."

"Melanie's planning on putting Bonnie down at her house, isn't she?"

"Well…" Scarlett had to turn away. A flush spread over her cheeks. "She knew it might be a possibility."

"So what's the rush?"

His voice thickened and he moved behind her. His hands slid up her waist, lifting her arms. Anticipation caught in her throat.

Not since that tender kiss three weeks ago had Rhett more than pecked her cheek. He ate at her table, watched her TV and slept on her couch but he was still a stranger in so many ways; a phantom roommate who came and went as he pleased. Bonnie never tired of playing with her daddy so much more, of hearing him turn her bedtime books into magical plays or giggling with him during a tickle attack. But Scarlett had tired of the new routine—not that it didn't include some perks.

Rhett had never been more open, and in some ways, never more himself. After Bonnie was asleep he would regale Scarlett with tales of his scrapes with death in the line of duty, of the odd men and colorful women he had encountered in his travels; he would make her laugh until she cried or shiver as a girl scout around a ghost story campfire. She never had to both cook_ and_ do the dishes any more. She was able to half the days, and the pay, for the college student/nanny, Lou, since Rhett apparently had to do hardly anything to keep his multimillion dollar shipping business afloat. (That fact alone irked Scarlett as much as it inspired her. Maybe one day she wouldn't have to work so hard to keep her family company in the black.)

Yet her long days at the office didn't seem so endless anymore. Work had become the exciting outlet it used to be, instead of the millstone grinding her gears. Most weekdays she actually beat her assistant Hugh out of the office and her warehouse manager Johnnie out of the parking lot. For once she had someone waiting for her, who wouldn't also be needing her.

Scarlett had tried to start a conversation about their limbo status, but Rhett always managed to slick his way out of it. And Scarlett couldn't really complain. It was just so _comfy _to have him at her side, acting the part of a friend again. She would look over while they wasted time on some late-night horror flic and wonder why he was so patient, so hesitant. If he noticed her watching him instead of the movie, he never said. The show would end, the credits would roll, and Rhett would skim his lips across her cheekbone and whisper good night. It was almost like she had a life again, a husband for the first time. Almost.

It was the almost that drove Scarlett to distraction. It was the almost that had made her steam with envy this morning when Rhett had casually complimented Mel on her new hairdo. What was he waiting for? Because she could tell he was waiting for something. He told her everything but what he was actually thinking about her, about them.

The other night she had flat out asked him why he slept over at her place if he didn't want to sleep with her—was it really just to protect her from the boogey man? Rhett's eye brows had flared up, a rare expression of honest surprise on his face. But a swift smile had masked his real feelings, and he had asked if she had ever considered him the boogey man. Scarlett had already tuned him out and missed the sincerity beneath the sarcasm.

She hadn't forgotten what he had done, or what he had almost done. Weeks later and she still couldn't put a name on it. She didn't want to. What was the point? She didn't keep journals and she hated history. Her face had always turned forward, her eyes fixed on the future. Regrets from yesterday had never weighted her down for too long. Scars and mistakes burned off her bones as quickly as fat did. She was kinetic, active, energetic; a high metabolic rate of body and mind. And with the docility of the last several days the brutality of that night faded deeper and deeper into the rear of her memory.

The softness of it lingered; the touch, the feel, the burn. Her desire won over her fear. Her lust dominated her resentment. Those chaste kisses became acid on her fevered skin; ammunition in the clip.

And now Rhett was holding her. His body pressed up against her back. She was locked, and she could tell he was loaded. Why wouldn't he pull the trigger? Maybe that's what he was waiting for—her to do it.

She relaxed into him. Suddenly he planted her gun into her palm and she tensed. She hadn't even seen him pick it up. A deep chuckle rumbled against her neck. He wrapped his hands over hers and readied the weapon.

The delicate pressure of his hand on hers and her hand on the gun reminded Scarlett of the morning he had told her to shoot him. Her heart and limbs trembled at the memory. They trembled at his touch.

"Learning to shoot a gun is only partially about skill; there's always an element of instinct." His breath rushed over her skin. He dragged his hands back down to her hips. "Tell me what you see Scarlett."

It took her a moment to steady her voice.

"I don't know. The white squares of the targets. Some trees. Lights."

He tapped his fingers on her waist.

"Is that all?"

"What else is there?"

"Instinct made easier."

He moved his hands back over hers, pointing the gun in sync with his words.

"The red lights of the security cameras. The curl in the fence where the chain-links have split apart. The two boulders just before the forest. The glints of the empty shell casings in the grass."

His voice went on and he tugged the gun this way and that. He noticed anything and everything that was out of place, that was within reach, that in a snap could be flipped into a weapon, a cover or an exit. His lips swept against her earlobe.

"The devil's in the details Scarlett. And when it's you or someone else, it's better to live and be the devil than die and be a saint."

He made a sudden move and Scarlett was instantly wrapped in a tight choke hold, with her own gun digging into her temple. She grabbed at Rhett and cried his name. He shifted again. Her gun was back in her hand, drilling into Rhett's spine, his arm crooked against his back and holding onto her wrist.

"Now you do it."

Slowly Rhett broke down each step. Lift here, slide there, spin next. It was a dance. Over the next hour he showed her more deadly dances, splicing the fluid movements into separate moves until she could patch them all together into lethal tangos.

Their limbs crossed and their bodies tangled in ways they hadn't for weeks. The sound of the hot lamps and the humid night beat all around them. Their sticky skin rubbed together. Scarlett's throat itched for water, her body for fire. Their last silent dance ended with her aiming her gun at Rhett's head, his eyes level with her stomach and his knees on the ground.

"Good," he said.

He started to rise. Scarlett cocked the gun and pushed her toe into his shoulder, forcing him back down. She pursed her lips and Rhett lifted his eyebrows. They were both a little breathless.

"You told me to shoot you once before."

"The offer's on the table if you've changed your mind." He glanced at the gun. "You're a fast learner. You can protect yourself."

"Good enough to protect myself from you?"

The smoky light of dusk had faded. The subtleties of his expression were lost in the shadows. The femme fatale bravado oozed out of her. Her hands shook. The gun started to slip. Her eyes lowered for a heartbeat. In that one pulse the balance changed. Rhett was on his feet and her gun was in his hands. It clicked as he disarmed it. He placed it on the counter and turned to Scarlett.

"I ask myself every night if you could defend yourself from me. I still don't know. Although if it's any comfort, I've never been able to protect myself from you."

He sighed heavily and bent down to gather up the bag, slinging it across his shoulder. It jostled on his hip as he came closer. The security lights made his tan face glow palely. His expression was smooth but something chaotic swarmed in his eyes.

"We should head home," he blandly said.

Scarlett was rolling her neck and massaging it but stopped at his words. Her body still throbbed from last hour's slow dances. The contact without release had pushed her to the brink. Her firing pin had been pulled back for too long without getting a single shot. She slumped against the wall and crossed her arms, determined. Her gaze trailed to his lips.

"I want you to kiss me—on the mouth."

"Is that so?"

"It is."

"Any other requests?"

"Let's start with a kiss and see where it goes."

He strummed his hand up and down the bag's strap, it vibrated like a zipper.

"You must be in bad shape to be asking."

"A kiss from the right person could change that."

Scarlett slid her foot out and tapped it against the point of his shoe. A smile had been hinting on the corners of Rhett's mouth but it vanished at her mild attempt at footsie. He combed a hand through his hair and looked down.

"Rhett?" she asked, her voice instantly small.

Her timidity must have been too much. Rhett flung the bag down and slammed into her. His mouth was hard, demanding. His tongue drove through her teeth. One hand slipped under her shirt and kneaded the soft curve of her waist; the other slid up her arm and clamped around her shoulder. The kiss was not a wild explosion; it was the razor pierce of a bullet to the heart.

At first Scarlett had stiffened in surprise at his direct assault but as she breathed him in—his smell and touch filling up her senses—she felt that spark of metal against the hammer. She dug into the kiss. Her hands plowed underneath his clothes to his skin. The grooves of his muscles bumped against her palms. She moaned as his lips burned against her mouth. And then as fast as it had flared, the heat cooled.

Rhett pulled back. His hands fell away from her body. His loud breaths blasted in her pounding ears. Scarlett opened her eyes, panting and pulsating.

He stood a foot away. The bag was already slung back across his torso. In the blue blush of the lights she could make out the red on his cheeks. There was a wall of friction between them—a good kind.

"We should head home," he said, again. Only this time his voice vibrated with expectation.

Before she could respond, he spun away and called out, without turning around, "And don't forget your gun. I have a few more moves I want to show you."

* * *

_Note: A bunch of questions/comments. Here are some answers. Only read them if you care. It's long. So I will say thanks for the reviews, requests and interest in this story up front. I'll admit, it's my favorite I've written for fanfiction. _

_And I'll put this up front, too. Helen, in response to your prolific praise (and this applies only to me): It's easier to produce mass quantities of fast food. It's much more difficult, and IMO, admirable and inspiring, to create a meal, a real, home-cooked, made from scratch feast. I'm fill-in-the-blank food chain and your Grandma's kitchen...or Mrs. Merriwether in Scarlett's kitchen. Ah. I will miss your story. (Don't get me wrong, I love me some greasy grub, too...Clearly.) _

_Now questions:_

_The title? It has something to do with James Brown's "This is a Man's World" and No Doubt's "I'm Just a Girl" being stuck in my head. Go figure on those two songs being stuck in anyone's head at the same time. But when I got the idea, I was hopped up on migraine pain meds and wrote the first two chapters in about a half hour or so. I had no idea I would take it so far. The rest of the plot came during the 3rd chapter...and has continued to balloon. And Scarlett's just a girl in those first two chapters, a teenager._

_How many chapters left? I wrote I had 3 planned out but that wasn't necessarily all that were left. These last two chapters are proof of that. They are in direct response to requests, and in the end I thought they showcased a little more fully where I want the story to be after R&S's long chat (20) and before what's coming next. The 2 chapters I thought would come next are now the two that will be coming. Did that make any sense? I hope so._

_Last chapter? lovegwtw I loved your review. You nailed it. I didn't want it to be choppy but I was trying to toe a fine line, because I wanted the hesitancy and indecision to come through. I think they'd be on very shaky ground. And Rhett basically forced himself on Scarlett, whether or not she relented and in the end relished in it, does not change that. What was his motive? So...I tried to flesh that out this chapter._

_Style? This story has always been centered, almost exclusively, on dialogue. It's made me work on diagloue and it's been a good exersize. I admire Henry James so much more, his novel "The Awkward Age" is all conversation. More narrative than usual in this chapterl. I hope it flowed alright._

_Vampires? That was only figurative, not literal, especially as the vampire myth is a modern popular cultural retelling of the rite of passage from childhood into adulthood, maiden into madam. There's a reason Dracula goes for the virgins and sucks their blood, at least allegorically._

_Bella reference?_ _I read a NYT book review a few months ago about how Katniss Everdeen was the first and foremost female archetype of the American survivor, a welcome shift from the fainting flower and anti-feminist archetype propagated by, um, other extremely popular young adult novels. Frankly my dears I was offended. The first? One name: Scarlett O'Hara. Sure, she only had her dimples and charm, and no crossbow, but she still refused to lose. There's a great, short article written by Ann Patchett commenting and wondering about Scarlett's resourcefulness, and its continuing value in shaping the modern American girl. _

_Cheers. PM me if you have more q's. _


	23. Chapter 23

**_Chapter 23: The Honeymooners Jump the Gun_**

_Note: You know sometimes I have forced a scene to fit my own plot purposes, but then again, at the end of the day I honestly feel this is a true representation of my opinion of the characters' characters, stripped of all exterior influences of their original timeframe and made into a tabula rasa (of their natures) for ours. I've tried to do the same thing with the plot. This isn't a modern GWTW; this is a postmodern GWTW—with a very marked intent to subvert roles and expectations, as well as a self-awareness, and at times self-referential tone. To wit, in the last chapter I worked it so that the "you need kissing badly" conversation was in the reverse, as was the other part of that conversation in the novel. Instead of Rhett talking about possibly saving Scarlett, his damsel in distress, he taught her how to protect herself, and take even him down. _

_Somewhat connected, my take on Scarlett as a mother is that she would be a more engaged mother now. By the conclusion of the actual novel, she even craved that…but unfortunately it was too late (or MM didn't want another 100 pages). She's so young for so much of the book, too young for what the world took from her and then threw at her. She's older when she had Bonnie in my take. Not only that but she's empowered, independent and, like the original, incredibly resilient. Yet… she's still so young…_

_Now Rhett. Well, he is still older. And today the age difference would be a bigger deal, at least in the States. Not only that but if Rhett was a benevolent chauvinist during Mitchell's time (and I mean Mitchell's time because GWTW is NOT a microcosm for the 19__th__ C American South, but for the early 20__th__ C South) then he truly would be a full-fledged equal partner proponent and practicer in this day. _

_So…with that in mind:_

_Previously on AGW: Scarlett and Rhett have a long chat (20); Rhett tells Scarlett LaFaim is dead and that someone (else?) is after them (20); Gun lessons and, yes as you all said, some pretty heavy innuendo (22). _

_Question: How long have you loved me? Answer: How long is a circle?_

_Warning: Mature-ish content. Very mature-ish (for me). _

"That was worth the wait."

"What—did you want me to fall on top of you the minute you told me you'd fallen for me?"

Scarlett stopped skidding her fingers up and down Rhett's abdomen and peeked up at him. A small grin warmed his lips. She shrugged and nestled deeper into the crook of his arm, wrapping her leg around his thigh. His leg hair tickled her skin.

"I don't know, but I didn't expect you to take so long."

She could feel more than hear his laugh. The sheets rustled as he slid down and rolled over to face her. Their legs unwound and rewound in a seamless shift. His leg hair still tickled.

"Do you know how long I've waited for this?"

His voice was low and scratchy; soothing in its roughness, like the old jazz records her dad used to play. Rhett's eyes danced around her face. He tangled his fingers in her hair, scraping his nails softly behind her ear.

"Waited for what?" she asked, smiling just a little.

He smiled just a little more. His legs tightened around hers, the muscles of his thighs and calves flexing taut. A sweet chill coursed through her veins. She felt the tender tug on her scalp when Rhett's fingers balled around her hair. His knuckles ground lightly into her head.

"For you, idiot," he replied and dragged her into a kiss.

It was leisurely, but not sloppy. He sucked on her lips and his tongue stroked the inside of her mouth. She arched toward him, sighing and shuddering into his embrace. A million thrills buzzed at the frays of her nerves. He groaned. A cool tingle flushed underneath her flesh again.

"Rhett," she breathed, as his lips burned down her throat.

"Hmm?"

His hand glided down from her head, slipping beneath the sheet, and started exploring her body; feathery flicks and slow sweeps of his fingers against her curves. The words escaped as a moan.

"I love you."

The gentle brushing stopped. The heat from his hand and mouth hovered, fever spots on her skin. He lifted his deep, unknowable eyes. She stared at them, physically retracting and mentally backtracking. His arm hardened underneath her cheek when he straightened it out, drawing back slightly to see her better.

"I didn't think it would matter to hear it when I already knew it," he said. "I was wrong."

She softened back into him and waited. Her eyes flooded with hope. He leaned in without saying anything. The hope drained and she shrunk away from his caress.

"Well?" she asked.

He licked his lips. The pause was too long. She scooted back and sat up, scrunching the sheets against her chest. Her gaze fixed on anything but his face, the trail of clothes along the carpet, their discarded guns on the dresser, the faint flicker of the floor lamp's bulb.

Rhett groaned—funny how different it sounded now, more of an extended grunt. The bed bounced and his shoulder grazed her arm. She recoiled, twisting even her hair away from that side of her body.

"Scarlett…"

"I'm not the kind of girl who goes around saying that." Her eyes sliced his way. "And I mean, _ever_."

A light smile touched his eyes and mouth. He reached for her, but she swatted his hand away, twirling up and yanking the top sheet along with her. She flattened it against her front. The air swirled around her naked back.

"If you can't say it," she waved her arm toward the door, "thanks for the sex but I don't do on the side anymore."

Rhett laid there, brazen and bare. In all the years she'd known him his physique hadn't changed an inch—muscular, bronzed and sleek. She did a double-take down his body. She'd much rather be doing a different sort of double-take—but not until he really exposed himself.

Rhett smirked at her wandering gaze. She stiffened. He rolled off the bed and wrapped the throw blanket around his torso. His eyes were stuck on her face. His abs creased as he walked toward her.

"If I don't get to look, neither do you," he drawled, glancing behind at her backside.

She folded the sheet completely around her body and hung the mock-trail over her arm. Her hair was bed-wild and her make-up smudged but when she tilted her head and slitted her eyes she became some green-eyed goddess—in a low-budget photo shoot for Vogue.

Rhett grinned, his eyes admired. Scarlett lifted a dark brow.

"I don't know why you're smiling. This is a fight."

"No, this is foreplay."

He grabbed her wrist, she flicked him off. He laughed and tried again. This time his grip circled her skin as a steel band. He forced her hand up and started nibbling on her fingers. The hot flutter in her gut was a traitor to her mood. She drew in a ragged breath.

"You're—"

His mouth pressed into her palm. The electricity shot straight to her tongue. He looked at her.

"In love? I know. I have been for years. And since you're the impulsive one—you said it before me, technically." His kisses moved up her arm, whispers as gentle as his words. "It's hard for me to say. I haven't let myself for so long. I had a plan, of course. I was going to show you, hold you in my arms and make love to you until you begged me to stop, and then tell you."

His lips floated just above her collarbone. A shiver raced into her heart.

"Instead you've got me begging you for mercy." His head dipped down and she felt the suction of his mouth on her neck. "New plan. No mercy."

His arms braced around her back and he scooped up her legs. She gasped as he tossed her onto the bed. The sheet flapped onto the floor. Rhett threw the blanket on the crumpled linen and headed straight at her. He didn't show her any mercy—but she didn't beg.

~AGW~

The next morning Scarlett woke up with a smile on her swollen lips and Rhett dangling a strawberry in front of her face. Her lids lifted slowly. The sunlight haloed his outline.

"Hey sleepyhead," he whispered. "I made smoothies and scrambled omelets. They're my specialty, ask Bonnie."

Rhett bumped the strawberry on her nose and disappeared. It took her a few bleary blinks to wake up, a few more to sit up. She stretched, her muscles sore from the busy day and busier night. The thin comforter drooped off her shoulders and her bare breast popped out. The morning sweltered with the late summer highs but clothes made her more at ease. She reached for the nearest shirt—it was Rhett's muscle tee—and yanked it over her head.

"Too bad."

She glanced up. Rhett watched her from the doorway in his boxer-briefs, a tray full of steaming eggs and frosty glasses in his hands. Red speckles dusted down her cheeks and neck. After what they'd done last night she couldn't believe all the modesty hadn't been pounded or sweat out of her.

"Hey," she said, slicking her hair behind both ears. "Smells nummy."

He hummed his reply and strode to the bed. The mattress creaked when he settled onto it. The springs had been fine yesterday morning. Heat flared over her cheeks again. Rhett winked and handed her a smoothie.

"Here, maybe this will cool you down."

She made a face and snatched the glass away.

"You're impossible," she muttered.

"You said incredible only a few hours ago."

She couldn't help but dimple at his toothy leer before taking a drink.

The fruity iciness melted on her tongue and snaked down her esophagus. Magic. She hadn't realized how parched or hungry she was. Forgetting even Rhett she scarfed down her food, shoveling in bite after bite. The tines of her fork scraped her empty plate and she slurped the last drop of her smoothie in a matter of seconds.

"Hungry?"

Scarlett turned to Rhett, bits of egg on her chin. He hadn't touched his scrambled omelet and his smoothie was only half-finished. He was trying—and failing—not to laugh. She stopped licking her fork and hastily set it on the tray.

"Aren't you?" she asked.

"I've seen starving cats eat slower than you."

"Har-har."

He laughed some more and swiped his napkin across her mouth. She mumbled thank you and flicked the crumbs off her—his—shirt. No point in attempting proper meal etiquette now.

"I always knew you could pack it in—but keep this up and I'll have to send you to a Swedish fat camp—on your own dime."

"Keep this up and you'll be telling your jokes to the doctors at the ER."

"So violent," he said, deadpan.

Their gazes met. Things are funniest when true. Their faces sparked with mischief and memory. Laughter surged up and spilled out of Scarlett. Rhett chuckled.

Her giggles faded into a smile. She fell against Rhett. His arm curved behind her and tugged her closer. With her head on his shoulder she could hear the crackle of his chewing and the slosh of his swallows. Everything was so new, exciting—even these humdrum noises.

He finished—after what seemed to Scarlett like an hour—and put the tray on the floor. They sunk into the bed and each other, intertwined in a silent, lazy cuddle. Rhett played with her hair and she listened to the thumping of his blood. The bass of his heart beat in rhythm with her pulse. The minutes slithered by, easy and undulating.

"I need to call Mel and pick up Bonnie," she said, sighing.

"I already did. Mel said they're going to a water park and she'll drop Bonnie off in time for a late nap."

"Oh." Scarlett straightened up and curled her knees to her chest. "Thanks."

It was strange, stranger than anything else, remembering that she didn't have to do everything on her own anymore. That Rhett would now be headlining in the part he'd always wanted to play in raising Bonnie. That her to-do list could be torn in half, her responsibilities divvied up. That she had a partner. From friend to lover to enemy to lover to friend, to partner—Rhett had filled so many roles in her life.

These blissful days of honeymoon nights couldn't last forever. So far they hadn't even lasted twelve hours. But how long did Rhett want their days together to last at all? Once they had been engaged. Now they were in love. What did he want her to be next? What did she?

Scarlett rested her chin on her arms. The future materialized and morphed within her mind. No vision remained. Everything hazed into a murky view. Could she ask these questions with so many uncertainties? Her gaze drifted to her gun. Would she have a future? Would _they_?

A hand rubbed over her spine. For a second her stomach hardened into rock and her lungs into iron. Her awareness returned and her body breathed. Rhett spoke.

"It's going to be hard going back to no sex after last night." He whistled. "Hard."

Scarlett's worries vanished into a side corner of her brain. Her brow forked in confusion and she whipped around to him.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"That doesn't mean I understood you."

He plucked his hand off her back. His eyes traced over face, somber and hungry. The expression was too raw and open to be camouflaging a lie. This wasn't a joke.

"I'm going on a trip."

"For how long?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No."

"So where are you going?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why?"

"Why can't I tell you or why am I going?"

"Both—either."

"The why I am going is the same reason I've trained you to be the NRA's calendar girl. The why I can't tell you is because I'm not certain where I'll be."

Their questions and answers had been firing off in rapid succession. Scarlett paused to catch her breath and gather her thoughts, shore up her confidence—in him. All the trust she'd begun to store for Rhett was already starting to slip through the cracks. Her stockpile wasn't sufficient enough to lose any.

"Okay," she said into her hands. "Okay."

She looked at him. Her fingers still veiled half her face. Something else—experience maybe—veiled his. She smoothed her hands down to her sides. Her knees were still bent into her chest. A clammy warmth peppered her skin.

"You'll be safe? We'll be safe?"

"Yes." His hand quivered, in hesitation, not fear. Even she could see that Rhett was not afraid of their unknown (possible zombie) stalker. He exuded a brave indifference to the whole affair. "I wouldn't have left until I felt certain you could handle things, for both Bonnie and you. And, putting all cards on the table, you won't be alone. I have friends who will hang...around when I leave."

She breathed in and nodded. Leave. That one word drowned out everything else he was telling her. Her throat swelled but she had to know.

"When do you leave?"

"Today, if possible."

"Of course."

Sadness welled up inside her but her tear ducts remained dry. It was a hollow sadness. A shuddering down deep, buried beneath too many layers and too many fears. Still she had to turn away when Rhett cupped her face.

"This is part of the reason I waited until last night to…test your feelings. It crushed me to leave you and not know you loved me. Well, that and any number of things. Fear that you'd reject me; fear that I'd been too drunk and hung over to remember what had happened that night and what had been said that morning. Fear that I remembered what had happened that night and what had been said that morning. Worry over how Bonnie would react if she tried to climb into your bed at night and found daddy there—this is all so new to her. I wanted to give her time to adjust to the idea of me being a daily fixture in her life." Rhett swiveled Scarlett's face back to his. "I wanted to give you time to adjust to the idea of me being a daily fixture in your life."

Thousands of memories and sensations pattered over Scarlett's mind. Years of his friendship and love washed up and over her senses. Even when he had caused the storm, he had always offered the shelter. Those days of acid rain had always been tempered by his outstretched umbrella, his willingness to do anything for Bonnie, or her, if she would only brave the monsoon and meet him halfway. If she would only trust him enough for him to reach out and help her.

She tilted her cheek into his weathered palm. Her gaze glossed over with hope.

"Rhett, you've been the only fixture in my life for years; that one—sometimes nagging, sometimes maddening—constant in my insane world." She brushed her lips against his hand. Her bright eyes stayed on his dark ones. Her voice filled with wonder. "You're the only one I can trust."

He didn't waste time. His shirt was off her. His body was on her. Rhett whispered, "I love you." The declaration rang in her ears. When he had gone, she could still feel the vibrations of his touch on her skin, the echo of his words in her heart. They lingered there, the last note of a song.

_Note: Yes, I thought this bit would be much shorter. Nope. So still 2 chapters, but let's be honest. Maybe it will turn out to be 3 or 4...Grrr. Can you tell I want to finish? Sorry if this was blah. I'm losing steam. But, hey, don't worry. I will finish. Thanks for the reviews._

_Oh, and Rhett didn't want to just have sex with her. Come on. After all this? If he wanted that, he would have just done that, once she was legal._


	24. Chapter 24

_Chapter 24: All Things Fall Apart_

_Dedicated to Ondine._

_Previously on AGW: Scarlett visits her dad in the hospital (10); Scarlett is kidnapped and interrogated (11); Rhett tells her LaFaim (the interrogator) is dead..but someone (else?) is after her (20); Rhett leaves, after telling Scarlett he loves her (and will be keeping a watch on her) (23)_

_Question: ? Answer: ?_

"You should just tell her how you feel. It worked for me and Rhett."

Scarlett turned the key in the ignition and looked at Will. His thin lips parted in a thin smile. Sadness and happiness stirred in equal parts in his pale eyes. He tapped his fingers on the rolled-down window and rested his arm on the side mirror, staring at her from outside the car door.

"Not everyone's as lucky as you and Rhett, or as crazy." His slow drawl rolled on, almost a stutter. "I told Carreen, Scarlett. I thought she deserved to know for sure before she made such a big decision. She chose with her eyes wide open. I just can't compete when the other guy is the Man Upstairs."

Scarlett wanted to say something to erase that sad surrender on his face but she could never find the right words when the story had already been written, and the ending explained. Carreen would be a nun. Her sister would become a sister, capital S. Her vows might as well have already been spoken. Only one phrase stuck out in Scarlett's mind, a vestige of her few summers with her mom's French Canadian cousins: fait accompli. She remembered it because she'd always liked how it dropped from her tongue, and made her sound smart. Fait accompli. Done deal.

"I'm sorry Will. She always was the big dreamer."

"Yeah, I just ain't never been a part of her dreams."

He pushed back from the car. His eyes flashed with life, and a warning.

"And that's okay. I wouldn't take them away from her. They're part of what I love about her. So don't get all Scarlett on her and start telling her what to do. Be a big sister, for once, and not her mom."

"Hey, I wasn't going to try and stop her. She's about as sweet as she is stubborn."

Will nodded. His yellow, wispy hair gleamed white in the bright August sun. Scarlett couldn't tell if he believed her or not. Sometimes he was as difficult to read as Rhett. And she didn't have the time to break out the dictionary and try to decode his expression now.

She flicked her eyes to the rear-view mirror. No wonder Bonnie had been silent in her car seat. Silence was never golden with a child.

"Bonnie O'Hara."

Her daughter's huge blue eyes blinked at her and the pen in her daughter's dimpled hands dropped. Black marks sliced up her chubby legs. Toddler varicose veins.

"You know better. We only color on paper."

"Sorry mommy," she pouted.

It was all for show. Her lip pucker curled into a smile.

"I want some cookies. Uncle Will said I could have them but not to tell mommy. So I don't tell mommy. I ask mommy."

Scarlett heard Will hide a laugh in his cough. Bonnie repeated her story, and demand. Scarlett shook her head and relented.

"You can have one. And you need to say please."

Bonnie clapped her hands and screeched the magic word, Will laughed some more—it was good to hear his goofy chuckle—and Scarlett broke one of his famous cookies in half and passed it onto her daughter. It was gone in seconds. Scarlett brushed the crumbs from Bonnie's fingers and licked off the melted chocolate from her own, before thanking Will again for the tomatoes and cookies. It amazed her that he hadn't been snatched up by someone else—a bachelor, who loved children, grew a garden and baked for fun. Weren't there girls at his comic conventions?

"Don't forget my offer," she reminded him as she shifted the gears into drive. "Talk to Rhett about a loan. I think your idea for a restaurant is great. Rhett's not a real localist like me, but I think he'd still be game for investing in a farm-and-eat type place. You could do it, easy. You're the second smartest guy I know."

"Second?"

"Rhett's the first."

Will shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned. The lines of worry and the shadows of double-shifts on his face disappeared in the creases. Scarlett saw the boy in the man.

"Who'da thought? Scarlett O'Hara's just another hopeless romantic."

She shrugged, a knowing smile on her face, and peeled out of the driveway. Romantic? Apparently. Hopeless? Not at all. Rhett had texted yesterday. It was only the third time she'd heard from him during his month-long absence. Fingers crossed and flights on-time, he would be coming home tomorrow.

She glanced again in her rear-view mirror. Bonnie had passed out—finally. The child had been running on fumes and fruit snacks. But her dozing daughter wasn't the only thing she saw. A familiar car had pulled out from nowhere and was trailing her. It took all her self-control not to slam on her brakes and give the tailgaters a fender-bender. Rhett's "back-up" made the hairs on the back of her neck go up. They were always there— nondescript lurkers in the same, nondescript midsize.

Looking behind once more, she switched lanes. The car swerved right behind her. She sucked in her breath. It was too close. Someone unknown, something unseen was always too close. She hadn't been able to really breathe for months, maybe years. But tomorrow that would change. For the first time in a long time she would really exhale.

She pushed the gas pedal to the floor, without a backward glance. She was done looking over her shoulder. Rhett's return would be the end of so many uncertainties and the beginning of so many possibilities, the end of her nightmares and the beginning of sweeter dreams. It had to be. Her nightmares were getting worse.

~AGW~

_Around and around the carousel turned, the festival colors streaking rainbows across her vision. Scarlett stood on the grass, the wind hitting her cheeks and whipping at her clothes. She was tempted to dance to the carnival melody. She swayed but realized there was no music. She looked and saw—there were no children._

_A tender giggle broke the hollow silence. Bonnie ran out from the shadows. The sky and ocean met in her young eyes, sparkling a dazzling blue. Scarlett reached out for her daughter but Bonnie skipped past her. Her brown curls flew in the air as she leapt onto the whirling ride._

_Scarlett yelled for Bonnie to get down but the wind tore her words into meaningless sounds. She tried to move but she couldn't. Panic lashed at her paralyzed legs and snaked up her arteries. "Bonnie!" she screamed. "Bonnie!" At last her daughter heard her. She smiled and waved._

_"Look mommy! I can get on the pony all by myself."_

_"No! No, baby, come back! Come to mommy. It isn't safe!"_

_Bonnie's smile widened. Her laugh danced over the rushing howl. She rubbed her hands and climbed onto the blue wooden horse, flipping her triumphant face back to her mother._

_"See mommy. I'm a big girl," she said, as the ride twirled her away._

_Scarlett panted with relief. Her lips trembled and she couldn't speak. The panic started to uncoil from her limbs. Bonnie came around the bend, sliding up and down on her painted saddle. _

_The wind suddenly quickened. The gust knocked Scarlett down. Her hair flapped in her eyes. She brushed it away and looked up. Terror gripped her heart._

_The faces of the wooden horses were crumbling into sawdust. The gilded top and candy cane poles were pulverizing into nothing. Bonnie was clinging to her disintegrating pony, sobbing. Again Scarlett tried to move but something was holding her down. Bonnie became just another blur in the swirling cyclone of dust, her screams the whining of the storm, as the ride spun faster and faster._

Scarlett woke up drenched in fear and sweat. The sun blinded her. She shut her eyes but flashes of the dream continued to play behind her lids. Shaking, she threw off the comforter and stumbled her way into Bonnie's room. Oblivious and dreaming, with pillow marks stamped on her chubby cheeks and her thumb hanging from her mouth, her daughter slept. Scarlett's heart raced to a shuddering halt. She glanced at Bonnie's Hello Kitty clock. It was a quarter to six.

She wobbled out of the stuffy bedroom and carefully re-closed the door. Rubbing a hand across her clammy forehead she reclined against the wall. Bonnie wouldn't wake up for another hour or so but going back to sleep was not an option.

Today was Sunday. A lazy day, usually. A day she let herself relax. Sometimes she would go to mass with Mammy. Sometimes she would have brunch with Mel. Always she would visit her dad. For the past three weeks he'd been doing so well that she'd taken him along on outings with Bonnie. It ripped her a new wound each week when he called her daughter by her own name, to know Bonnie would never remember her grandpa how he used to be; the funny, gruff teddy bear. But it hurt Scarlett more to not see her father with her daughter. Bonnie would never know her grandma. She _would_ know her grandpa, or what was left of him.

Last week they had gone to a park with a carousel but a thundershower had stopped them from going on the ride. Scarlett had promised Bonnie they would go back, with Papa Gerald. Her daughter had an elephant's memory and had reminded Scarlett of her promise at bedtime last night. With the screams of the dream still jamming her ears, Scarlett was tempted to lie to Bonnie, or bribe her to go somewhere else. But she stomped on the thought before it became a plan.

She straightened up and walked toward the kitchen, grazing her hand along the wall. Rhett was coming home today, not in two days, not in one day, but today. In a few hours. His plane landed right in the middle of Gerald's release hours. She'd already texted him the name of the park. He'd already texted back that he would meet them there. A nightmare wasn't going to make her upend all her plans and disappoint her toddler. Disney songs had lied to her. Dreams don't come true—the good or the bad. Life just happens.

A flutter of red in the window caught Scarlett's eye as she passed into the living room. She turned and saw a cardinal swooping down from the rooftop. Her gaze followed it to the street. The well-known car idled on the curb. Her face hardened. The green of her eyes froze to crystal. She would bring the gun today, just in case.

~AGW~

"It's okay, Bonnie. You can go with him."

Bonnie's fingers slipped from her hand, leaving a warm trail on Scarlett's skin. She smiled and nodded her head in encouragement. Bonnie's tiny teeth edged out over her bottom lip. She turned her cherry face up to her grandpa. Their matching blue eyes crinkled with matching smiles. Gerald held out his palm, and glancing back once more at her mom, Bonnie took it.

The two walked over to the carousel. Scarlett leaned back against the rail, hugging Bonnie's light rain jacket across her arms. She pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh—or cry—at how similar the sixty year old man and the three year old girl walked; their stubby legs bowing with an identical, bouncing gait. Bonnie's head bobbled as she chatted. Scarlett could just make out the high, bubbling soprano. Her dad's face was turned down. His smile was a little less vacant, his eyes a little clearer. She pressed her lips together once more, but a tear still snuck out from the corner.

She'd been so quick to cry lately. It was almost like she was…She shook the thought away and stuffed Bonnie's jacket into her Texas-sized purse. It was just today. It was just her dad.

Gerald had still called Scarlett Ellen. He had still asked her if she wanted to take the girls to the zoo or their Mammy's. That aching vacancy had dimmed the light in his eyes for most of the afternoon. There was still nobody at home in his mind. But for the briefest of moments, he had seemed to almost remember that at one time, someone else had existed; that he had been that someone. His brogue had softened to a lullaby and he had asked if he could take the pretty, little girl on the ride, if it pleased the mother.

The line for the carousel wasn't long. The day was as muggy as smoky glass, the sort that erupted from the beach when lightening struck the sand. Few locals would brave this sort of stormy heat. Bonnie and Gerald hopped onto the ride, with almost the entire herd of plastic horses for their choosing. Scarlett watched Bonnie skip over to a cerulean one with a cotton candy mane. She told herself it was only coincidence. But her hand inched toward the gun concealed in her purse just the same.

Gerald lumbered onto the yellow horse next to his granddaughter. His round face grinned down at her. He said something to Bonnie and the two looked Scarlett's way. They flailed their arms wide in a happy hello. It was all too familiar. The jagged pictures from her nightmare focused into high definition. The groove of the hidden gun sank into her hand and she managed to smile at them.

The few other children and parents, and one teenage couple, scattered around the rest of the carousel. The heavy lift of metal and steel creaked to life. Scarlett sighed when the music rang out across the park. Her grip on her gun loosened. Bonnie and her dad disappeared, wheeled away with the circus chimes of the merry-go-round. Around and around it went.

Scarlett checked her phone. Rhett was late. He should have been here by now. She squinted into the haze. He must be coming soon. She didn't see her watchdogs anywhere.

She relaxed just as the ride circled to a stop. The other riders hopped off but Scarlett couldn't see _her_ family. Their horses had finished their endless race on the opposite side. She stood on the tips of her toes to see over the heads of the sparse crowd. Shoulders bumped against her own as she weaved closer to the gate. No sign of Bonnie or her dad. A touch of worry hitched her lungs and she hurried past the ticket taker, mumbling the reason.

In four or five quick pants, she had found them. They were astride their colorful horses, talking. Scarlett bit her tongue to stop from interrupting.

"No, silly, I'm not Scarlett. Mommy's Scarlett. My name's Bonnie."

"Is that so?"

"No it's not so. It's Bonnie."

"Okay, Miss Bonnie. Tell me what's my name?"

Her daughter put a finger to her chin and twisted her mouth. Scarlett adjusted her purse's shoulder strap and waited. Bonnie's blue eyes lit up.

"Papa Gerald," she replied. "You my grandpa."

A spark of life—not just the shadow of the flame like earlier this afternoon—but the actual flicker of recognition glowed in the tired, once-florid face. Scarlett's hand flew to her mouth. Her breath blew hot and wet against her palm. Slowly Gerald turned his head toward his daughter. He must have heard her faint gasp.

"Scarlett," he said. Not a question, not a lie. "Scarlett."

In a shuddering sob that reached her lips only as a whisper she called back.

"Daddy!"

A smile, a real smile, started to spread over his mouth. His eyes were looking at her, not through her. She took two steps toward him. Silky tears of yesterday dripped down her cheeks. But then a shadow darkened her dad's expression. Something red wavered in her periphery.

Scarlett started to pivot around but at that moment her dad bellowed. He lunged at her, shoving her down. Her gun flipped out of her tumbling purse and skidded away. Her head cracked against the carousel's cold metal floor. For a second everything turned black. When she opened her eyes the edges of her vision were blurred, but the face of the man approaching her was clear as ice. Her nightmares had finally become her reality.

Cruel, twisted and angular, LaFaim stalked toward her, limping and toting a gun. Alive. She scrambled back. Her hand splashed into a warm, thick puddle. Afraid to see, she felt. A soft belly. A cotton shirt. A whiskered chin. The world slowed. Sound muted to a deafening roar. And she looked down at the lifeless face of her father, at his lifeless blue eyes.

No! No! No! A flood of sorrow invaded her soul. Her mind cried the words she couldn't speak. Her eyes were washed out. But she didn't have time to grieve. She didn't have time to think. A scream had just pierced through the numbing horror. Bonnie's scream.

Scarlett flipped her head. Bonnie cowered on the floor behind her blue horse, her face full of the terror Scarlett felt. Bruises bulged along her fair skin. She must have fallen. A chilling laugh cut the air. Scarlett glanced back at the sound. LaFaim was only a few feet away. She had to make a choice. Her gun was in one direction. Her daughter in the other. There was no way she could reach them both.

LaFaim raised his weapon. The silver barrel shined in the grey sunlight. His golden teeth gleamed beneath his smile. Scarlett reacted. She pitched forward, arching her body in front of her daughter. A pain sliced into her gut as she fell on top of Bonnie. Another one ripped through her shoulder. A final one drilled into her side.

The daylight bled into crimson. Red tar pooled along the edges of her eyes. She couldn't see LaFaim anymore. She only saw the pain. She only felt the red. But it was okay. It was okay. She could still hear Bonnie's screams.

"Don't worry," Scarlett gurgled, a thick liquid on her tongue. She stretched out her arm and clasped onto her daughter's shaking wrist. That same thick liquid squelched between her fingers.

"Don't worry. Daddy's coming home today."

Before the liquid filled Scarlett's ears, she thought she heard Bonnie start crying out for her daddy. For a moment she even thought she heard him answer. But darkness came over her senses. The crimson faded to black.

_Note: Gutted. That's how I feel right about now. The three big falls in one chapter. . .  
_

_________Added: _

_________Key: Localism is a movement to support local farms, eat local foods. Some of said farms have restaurants connected and serve essentially only the food they farm. It's a nod to my home region, the lovely, lush corner of the US, the Pacific NW. I think Will would like to do something like that. Maybe I'll have him move to Seattle, or Portland (OR). It's still okay to wear flannel there.  
_

___But the real reason I added...After writing this chapter I changed my plans for the next, for the end. It just doesn't feel 'right' now. But I haven't figured out what does, not exactly. This means-barring some inspiration and insomnia in the next day or so-I won't update again until after I come back from my trips. Sorry. I didn't want to leave the story in such bad shape for over two weeks. Here's hoping my final travel destination, the smell of home and rain and pine, will enlighten me and I can still finish this before August ends. _


	25. Chapter 25

_Chapter 25: A Beautiful, Little fool_

_Question: Who still needs to pack? Answer: Me... (__So I shouldn't have written anything tonight but I had it in my head and was worried I would lose it if I didn't just type it out right away. __"Hello my name is Dixie and I'm a Windaholic."_ Ahh. I'm such an addict about GWTW, always have been. I need to find a support group.)

_Previously on AGW: Brent's funeral (15); the last chapter (24)_

* * *

"Scarlett! Scarlett! Oh my…Scarlett. Please God. Scarlett."

It was a voice she knew, but something was the matter with it. It was broken. She wanted to answer but she couldn't. She was broken.

The world was.

It had exploded and she was floating in the aftermath, on a sea of shattered glass. Only her face stayed above the jagged surface. Her arms and legs skidded beneath with the crystal shards. Her stomach and back had been sawed open. She didn't know what was holding her body together. It wasn't her ripped apart belly. It wasn't the glass; that once fragile substance damaged and destroyed, the endangered becoming the danger.

Lights pulsated through her shut lids. Pressure built up against her bones. The man's ragged voice had silenced. Maybe it had been her imagination. Maybe it had been a hallucination. Maybe it had never happened, any of it—her world erupting, her body splintering, her life cleaving in two: the moment before and the moment after. Maybe this was the only moment, a million cuts grinding her flesh raw; the end collapsing into the beginning.

_Scarlett lounged on her parent's porch swing, fanning herself with the American Lit worksheet she was supposed to be finishing. Her pose was lazy, almost graceful. Raven locks spilled around her shoulders and dipped into the shadow in between her breasts. Stripes of ivory flesh peeked out from below her shirt when she rustled her arms. The April sun beat down on her, basting her skin with a rosy sheen of sweat. The cutoff jeans exposed her muscular, slender legs. Every easy curve and firm slope of her body was languidly sensual, sweetly erotic. And if not for that wild hunger in her green eyes, innocent. _

_At sixteen she was aware as she was unaware of sex, not the act or the gender, but of the fantasy, the addiction, the intimacy, the symbol beyond the thrill of corporeal connection and a chemical spike. The sex exuding from her was all those things, and more. It was the simple allure of the ankle to men in former times, the promise of touching the forbidden. It was the potential of everything. She was Eve, uninterrupted, biting the fruit with conviction and not from temptation. In her eyes, as green as the earth, stirred the primordial forces of life itself: chaos and creation._

_She crossed her bare legs, her thighs rubbing against each other, and hid the smirk at the surge of lust in the Tarleton twins' eyes. The potency of passion meant nothing to her, except a vague sense of control. She was too young to know the price, or the value, of power. She was a girl, in a woman's body _

_"War? What war?" she asked, bored. _

_"What war?" Brent stuttered, flushed from the heat of bodies above and below. He slapped his thigh for release. Incredulity doused the daydream. He shook his head at Stu and turned back to Scarlett. _

_"The war on terror—do you ever watch the news?' _

_"Yes."_

_"The news—not the Daily Show."_

_"The Daily Show is news."_

_"I hate to break it to you, Scar," cut in Stu, more relaxed and aggressive. He poked the stripe of skin above her jeans. "But Jon Stewart talks about the war, or wars, in the Middle East on a pretty regular basis."_

_Scarlett folded her hands, crinkling her sheet of homework._

_"So I only watch it if he's interviewing someone I like. And I'm not a bimbo. I know there's a war going on." She brushed her hair back. "But what difference does that make to me? We're in Georgia, not Badghad—" _

_"I think you mean Baghdad," suggested Brent._

_"Whatever. Baghdad. We're not even in New York. Honestly, I don't know why you want to enlist Brent. Your parents practically own half of UGA—they would have admitted you no matter what your GPA was. They did Stu."_

_She elbowed Stu and winked, the jab of touch softening the verbal one. The twins laughed. Their long, thick bodies shook the swing. Their biceps flexed against Scarlett's arms. _

_"Hey, I get more credit than that." Stu pumped his arm, throwing an invisible football. "I've got mad skills on the field."_

_The three laughs rang out again. Their lusty, young voices braided together in a carefree, careless harmony. Stu was a top-draft high school lineman, but he'd said what Boyd always did when his younger brothers ragged on him for lacking any athletic ability. Brent was the first to quiet. His blue eyes suddenly colored with a cool ferocity, the fervor of the unjaded believer. _

_"I'll get to learn how to use sniper riffles and grenades. It ain't all drones. I mean, I'll be a Marine, guys. They're intense. They have to be. The war's intense." _

_Scarlett gave him a look. The War on Terror. It had been going on since she could remember, her dad complaining about who knows what, in who knows where, her mother worrying silently over some unfamiliar and unseen horror. Some collective events had inevitably trickled down into her dense, distracted brain, only to pool in forgotten corners, leaving about as much impression on her as a breeze on a window. _

_The violence was too far removed, the terror somebody else's reality. The storm raged in some other place. But if Brent went to that unknown place—it would become a known place. Her world would shrink. And it couldn't do that. Her world was her; she the sole, selfish inhabitant. A faint ache tugged at her heart. It had a name she knew by instinct. Dread. _

_"I don't want to talk about the stupid war anymore," she abruptly snapped. "You can play the hero Brent. Not me." _

_Both Tarletons looked a little taken aback. The smoothness of the afternoon shorted into static. It took a moment for the picture-perfect scene to blink back, the zebra pixels to become sharp colors again. The return of ease was only a visual effect, skin deep. _

_"You…you going to the Wilkes' party tomorrow night?" Stu asked after a moment, standing up and stretching his arms over his head. _

_"A party? Of course."_

_Her response was robotic, the automated voice of hotlines and ATM machines. Stu and Brent tried a few more topics but they all fizzled against Scarlett's superficial interest. In the end they left. Stu said good bye and jogged down the steps. Brent rose reluctantly. He watched Scarlett. Before he turned to go, he spoke. His words fell clumsily from his inarticulate, untried tongue. _

_"Truth Scarlett? I'm going to be doing something that matters—even to you. All these wars…they can't be for nothing." He licked his lips. "They just can't be for nothing."_

_The twins hopped into their Mustang and sped out of her drive way. Scarlett stayed on the porch. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the lawn, across her body. That tingle of dread wouldn't quit. It kept pricking here, there, here, there. What would happen if her world changed?_

_She glanced down at her crumpled assignment. A series of quotes that she was supposed to write about, that she didn't even understand. One jumped off the page. _

_"And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed...He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. "I know myself," he cried, "but that is all." _

_Scarlett lifted her turbulent, lusty gaze. The struggle would be worth the while. She was worth the while. Her wants, her needs, her life, her world. No one would change it. She knew herself. The world was hers to change. _

An electric scream and a techno beep bleated in Scarlett's ears. Sparks flew at her heart. The chandelier bits crushed beneath her body fragmented into smaller, pointed granules; the weight of her bucking chest pounding the pieces to powder.

And in her mind, she silently screamed. Fool, fool, fool. Everything had been for nothing. Her struggles, her failures and her triumphs fractured, futile. War—fighting—it was all for nothing. Brent had died. She would, too. In the end youth and beauty were no more. Always, always life surrendered to death. She had not changed the world. It had changed her.

Had her life ever been in one piece? Had she? Once. As a child she had been unbroken, when time had given instead of taken, when she could have one thing without losing something else, when she'd had a mother, when she'd had a father, when she had been a girl. What was left of that girl but an aching soul? She didn't want to repeat her innocence. She wanted to repeat the intoxicating thrill of losing it again; to bite the apple and not face the consequences of a fallen world. Not to be bitten in return.

Another jolt rocked her body. Time meant nothing, with her existence so near and so far. Her eyes fluttered open. A dark face streaked with tears. The sable eyes drenched in the gossamer strands. It was a face that called her back from the brink. It reminded her of what she still had to lose, of what she still had to gain. It reminded her of another girl, the girl whose world she would destroy should she accept defeat. But it was not the face she wanted to see.

She opened her mouth, the sweet stench of morphine being sopped up by her veins and sinking her back into oblivion, "Mammy…Where's Rhett?"

Before her grandmother could answer, Scarlett was gone.

_Note: Stop. She's just in a morphine-induced coma. I liked the effect the ambiguity had on the text but I will clarify so I don't have a revolt. Thanks for the reviews. Sorry I won't have time to review the other updates I saw on the board...but I hope to have a chance to read while I'm away. _

_And I meant to have a stronger narrative-voice. Mitchell does in the first part of the first chapter...I wanted to mirror that. _

_Key: Jon Stewart is an American comedian who satirizes the news on a TV show called the Daily Show. American Lit is short for American Literature, most high school juniors have to take the class. She reads Fitzgerald and I actually quote quite a bit from him. He's my favorite American author, Mitchell included. She's my favorite story-teller. A lineman is a defensive position in US football. UGA is University of Georgia. GPA is grade point average.  
_

_And since I'm on a Fitzgerald kick: Applicable quotes to AGW/GWTW: _

_ "Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood, she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again." _  
_ ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise_

_ "Selfish people are in a way terribly capable of great loves." _  
_ ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise_

_"All she wanted was to be a little girl, to be efficiently taken care of by some yielding yet superior power, stupider and steadier than herself. It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream" _  
_ ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned_


	26. Chapter 26

_Chapter 26: Yes but I would not feel so all alone. Everybody must get stoned.  
_

_Previously on AGW:_

_Melanie and Scarlett cleaning the apartment kitchen after the break-in (6); Ashley telling Scarlett to call off engagement because he doesn't trust Rhett (13); the end when everyone 'falls' as LaFaim's shooting at them (24)_

_Key: Netflix is an online service to watch movies (or get them mailed to you). Second Amendment is the amendment that deals with bearing arms in the US Constitution. Smith and Wesson is a gun company. IRA is the Irish Republican Army. _

_Note: I'm not trying to make any grand political comments, or propagate stereotypes of US southern culture. I know not all southerners are members of the NRA. although there is an undeniable historical association with guns and the states south of the Mason-Dixon line, just as there is one "Out West."_

_Question: What happens when you try to whittle down a block of wood? Answer: Splinters. (That's how I feel about this chapter.)_

"Pick up the gun," said a lullaby voice.

Scarlett turned her head. Her mother stood an arm's length away from her, against a background of white. It shimmered with a strange sheen, like florescent lights behind frosted glass, and smeared the edges of Ellen's outline.

"Mommy?"

Ellen smiled but did not respond. Lifting an arm, she pointed at Scarlett's feet.

"Pick up the gun," she said, again.

Confused Scarlett dropped her eyes. Charles' slim pistol that Melanie had given her when she had lived in the 'ghetto'—and that she had returned years ago to her friend—gleamed on the floor. She flipped her head back to her mother, who still smiled softly. She looked younger than Scarlett remembered, or maybe it was just that Scarlett was older. Whatever the change was, for the first time she became a woman, instead of just a mom, to her daughter. But Scarlett shook her head at the vision, because she had never forgotten how much her mom hated guns.

Years before Ellen had lost her high school sweetheart in a random act of violence—a gang initiation murder. Ellen's boyfriend had been the wrong guy, in the wrong place, at the most wrong time. The tragedy had transformed the young Ellen, pitting her against her father for supporting generous Second Amendment interpretations and driving her into the arms of an older Irish guy fresh off the plane from Dublin, who was as opposite to Pierre's ideas of acceptable boyfriend material as possible. She married Gerald within a turbulent six weeks—after she'd learned he was as opposed to semiautomatics as she was, his two older brothers having died from some IRA shootouts gone awry.

Guns. They were the one thing Scarlett's father had never adopted when he had converted, body and soul, to Ellen and her rural southern way of life. Scarlett had always suspected her dad would have relented and accepted the Smith and Wesson culture eventually if her mother's convictions against guns had in any way altered. But they never had. Kind, docile Ellen had been fierce about only three things in her life: her faith, her family and her hatred for all things weapons-related. It was the reason Scarlett had never learned to shoot, had never begged to pack heat for her sweet sixteen like most of her girlfriends and all of her guy friends, the reason she didn't have a senior glam picture with a rifle slung across her back, and the reason she glanced back down at the pistol at her feet, when her mother urged her for a third time to pick it up, and simply gaped at it.

As she stared, threadbare carpet started spiraling out from around the gun. Scarlett raised her dumbstruck gaze. The bright, blank canvas was filling up with shapes and colors. Some invisible pencil sketched the scenery change. Soon the dusty streaks had drawn, piece for piece and size for size, the first apartment she had lived in after her mom had died and her dad had been committed.

Scarlett wrinkled her nose as the stench of burned pasta wafted her way. She glanced back at her mom, but Ellen had gone. Melanie stood in her place. Her brown eyes were sharp with fear.

"Shoot him, Scarlett, quick!" she yelled, flailing her arms in the direction of the fire escape. Scarlett followed Mel's frantic flapping toward the window. Her heart skidded to a halt. Perched on the sill was a masked man dressed from head to toe in black.

Without another pause, Scarlett slammed her knees onto the carpet and grabbed the gun, spinning toward the intruder. Mel started to shriek. From somewhere outside a child started to scream. Scarlett's hands shook, her face white with wild anger, and she pulled the trigger.

The kickback knocked her onto the floor. Ashy flint coated the air. The gun burned Scarlett's clammy palm and she flung it away. She scrambled up and ran over to the slumped-over man. Melanie leapt to her side. Both women panted in silence, staring at the blood thickening the black fabric, their eyes watching the limp arm swing side to side in a metronomic beat.

"You killed him," breathed Mel. "I'm glad."

Scarlett nodded at her and turned her face back to the man. Her mind was somehow both empty and full. The hot adrenaline was chilling into a frozen nothing.

"Do you think we should take off his mask?"

"Yes."

Scarlett's fingers gripped the edges of the mask. She sucked on her teeth. LaFaim was under there. He had to be. Her breath blew cool against her lips.

One. Two…

She ripped off the mask. A scream tore from her throat. It wasn't LaFaim.

It was her father.

Scarlett screamed and screamed but nobody heard her. Nobody came. The dream faded, glitching to a black screen. Scarlett fought against the dark but it was all around her, over her eyes, on her body, in her heart. The sharp sea of glass had melted into this endless, twisting hole. And then from somewhere far away she heard words, voices. The sound punctured the blackness, rippling as waves in an inky puddle.

"Where's Melanie?"

"She stepped out for some coffee."

"Oh." Ashley paused. "And Mammy…"

"Watching the kids," Rhett tiredly said. "Hopefully letting them pick their own shows on Netflix so she can nap."

"Right."

A long silence hung between the words. From her world of isolation Scarlett wondered if the conversation had ended, or if it had even ever happened. And then she heard Rhett speak again.

"It's hard for you, isn't it?"

"Many things are—what exactly are you referring to?"

"Exactly what you think. To look at her. To look at me."

"Is there a point you want to make?" Ashley quietly asked. "Or are we just shooting the breeze?"

"I know you're dying to get something off your chest. I'm only trying to help."

"I never took you for a do-gooder."

"I'm not. We don't love being bedfellows, but war makes for strange ones. Still I wouldn't call you my enemy."

"Platitudes now Butler?"

"Whatever helps you unload."

"I don't have anything to say. You already know."

"Know what?"

Rhett's voice was as light as Ashley's was heavy.

"I never took you for a masochist, either, Butler."

"We all have our fetishes, our deviations."

"Are you trying to tell me that Scarlett is yours?"

"Something like that," muttered Rhett.

"Something like you think she's mine," replied Ashley.

"Like I said, strange bedfellows Wilkes."

"I've never hidden how much I care for her. Never."

"Care? That's a new euphemism."

"It's not a euphemism—or a platitude. It's the truth."

"Truth? I'm not sure I know what that means anymore. If I tell a story enough times, does that make it true? Tell it so often I forget it's not fact? For years I thought that was all Scarlett did with you—built you up as everything she had ever wanted—and refused to see you as you really were. But now, I'm not so sure. I think you enjoyed wearing the costume as much as she enjoyed dressing you up in it. All these years…I always thought it was because you were her first—call me sentimental—despite her telling me on our first meeting that you weren't—but now I get it. _She_ was your first."

The pause after Rhett's drawling indictment stretched on and on.

"I know what you're doing."

"How's it working?"

"No comment."

"Spoken like a true politician."

"You think you have all the answers, but you don't," clipped Ashley. His endless cool seemed to be cracking against Rhett's lazy pix-axe of questions. "It's not always about sex or power, or even self-preservation. It's about there being a wrong and a right—about doing something because it's what should be done, not what could be done. But you already know that. You've always known that. I remember telling Melanie that I didn't think you and I were so different. And then—"

"Korea happened." Rhett cut in.

"Korea happened."

"I suppose you would have turned the prisoners loose right away, freed the captives and saved the day."

Another interlude of silence followed. Scarlett started to drift away into the void. Before she went unwillingly back to the black she made out Ashley's low, cryptic reply.

"I wouldn't have killed them in cold blood—even if it was to save my own skin, even if it did save my own skin."

The voices stilled. Scarlett's night returned. She couldn't make sense of what she had heard. But that was nothing new. Nothing had made sense to her for—she didn't know how long. She was stuck in a world of hazy nightmares and surreal memories, lost in an orbit of a different planet. The pressures and forces on her as known as they were unknown.

Sometimes it was the nightmare of her killing her father. Sometimes she was a little girl, riding one of her horses. Other times she was a teenager, speeding in her parent's stolen car with faceless men in the passenger seat—faceless, but not nameless. Brent, Stu, Ashley, even Rhett rode next to her; their personalities in the shape of their figures: strong, lithe, slender or solid.

That last conversation—had it been a dream? Had it been real? Why would Rhett talk like that to Ashley? Why would Ashley speak like that to Rhett? Dimly she realized that she had never understood the man she had loved for so long, or the man she now loved.

There was a merciless cycle to her thoughts, that the dullness of unconsciousness did little to numb. Around and around the questions would spin. Each revolution hurled her to the ground. It was the phantom carousel ride, spinning and spinning, and never letting up.

Until one day, one time, the dark ride slowed. The real world seemed almost within her grasp. A new voice floated toward Scarlett. It was the voice she had heard the most, when awareness ebbed into her brain.

"Rhett when was the last time you slept?" Melanie asked.

"I might ask you the same thing."

"You might," she yawned.

The conversation paused. Machines hummed on low. The rasp of a door closing clicked somewhere nearby. Scarlett felt a tingle in her toes. She _felt _her toes.

"I like that nurse," Melanie commented. "She's snuck me a few popsicles, even though I'm not a patient."

"Lucky you."

"I am lucky," Melanie said after a moment, ignoring the tease in Rhett's tone. Her voice was thick. "We're all lucky."

Suddenly she started to cry, in great aching gasps. Something, or someone, soon muffled her weeping. Her sobs mangled her apologies into blubbering. Rhett spoke, as gently as he did with Bonnie.

"I wish I could say something to make it better, Mel. I…"

"Better? Better?"

"Do you want me to leave? We've been spending so much time together. I'm a perceptive guy. I can tell it hasn't been easy for you."

"You think I'm crying because I'm upset? With you?"

"You should be. I am."

Melanie sniffled.

"Ashley told me everything last night, Rhett. And I mean everything. He said you talked yesterday. He…he told me about what he did for the CIA. He told me what you did. He told me what happened in Korea."

"He told you—"

"Everything," Melanie whispered. "I said he told me everything. How you saved him. How you protected Scarlett from that man. How you…"

"How I killed three of Ashley's cellmates—two Americans and a Frenchman—right in front of him, and then—"

"And then beat him to within an inch of his life," Melanie finished.

"Yes, that." A chair squeaked on the floor. "I'm sorry. No wife should have to hear that. Forget being upset with me. You're in the right to hate me."

"Why? Because you did what you had to do to save my husband?"

"I don't think most people would see it that way, Melanie. Not even your husband."

"Most people don't have to make the choices you did either." She let out a long sigh. "Ashley…sometimes…sometimes he can't see in color. Sometimes he can only see in black and white. Goodness knows I love him, but sometimes he sees things for what he wants them to be, and not for what they are."

"And you don't?"

"Oh. I'm sure I do about some things. But Rhett, when I think of all the evil that man LaFaim spread around this world, of all the horrible things he made you do. He was a cancer, a parasite. How can I blame you Rhett? Honestly I'm just relieved that you killed him before he hurt anyone else that I love."

Rhett's next words carried a heavy shame.

"I didn't kill him soon enough. I should have gone back and made sure he was dead over three years ago, instead of leaving him to bleed in that inferno. I should have trusted my gut instead of the facts. I should have never left my family."

"You came in time."

"Not for Gerald."

Rhett's voice cracked. That last piece of hope, dangling from Scarlett's heart, cracked, too. Her father was dead. Lost forever. But her distant despair was put on hold as Rhett's howl pummeled to her heart.

"It's all my fault," he cried. "Scarlett's father's dead and it's all my fault. LaFaim knew I'd take the bait when I landed. I headed straight for Scarlett's factory. I should have just called her. But I was crazy with worry. At that point, I knew he was in Atlanta somewhere, hounding her every move. I played the wrong card. He hustled me like a virgin mark and nearly cost me everything."

A whisper of footsteps padded on the floor. This time it was Rhett's cries muted by cloth. Melanie soothed him with soft shushes.

"Gerald's death isn't your fault. It's LaFaim's fault. And he didn't win. He died. But you didn't. And neither did Scarlett. She's alive and Bonnie's alive and—"

"The baby's not."

Those words sent shock waves into Scarlett's mind. Baby? What baby? The question frothed in her mouth, her tongue brimming with unheard screams. A baby? A miscarriage? Was that the loss she had felt? The unending hole? She wasn't lost. Her baby was. The child that had never been and never would be, that never even was.

Abruptly Scarlett sensed it. That final truth had unlocked something. That gravity keeping her down began to lift. A hand brushed against her forehead. Rhett sounded closer, closer than he had in so long.

"I just wish she would wake up. She should have come to by now."

Tears still textured his voice. The darkness lightened, the black peeling away into shades of orange. Scarlett opened her eyes. Melanie noticed first and smiled.

"Rhett, she just did."

_Note: Tortuous. Literally. It weaves too much. But I'm so sick of it. And thanks to my recent one-shot and some much appreciated back and forth with LMS...I didn't kill Bonnie or Melanie. I don't know if "tempted" is the right word, but both scenarios are written and will never be posted. The next chapter will be...happier. And then the epilogue. I'll end it on 28. Scarlett's age at the end. Cheers and thanks for the reviews. _

_And the Ashley/Rhett scene. It was a bunch of things from their indirect interaction together in the novel. Do you know? Rhett only says one direct thing to Ashley, the entire book. And visa-versa. Tell me if I'm wrong. Hmmm..._

_And Lawdy...no Rhett didn't mean to get Scarlett pregnant in this story...but he didn't really try that hard to not get her pregnant either._


	27. Chapter 27

_Chapter 27: After all today is another day._

_Previously on AGW: Scarlett finding Rhett's sister's lotion (5); Flashback to Scarlett on porch with Tarleton twins (25); Bonnie falling off her merry-go-round ride (24); Scarlett waking up._

_Key: Wonder Woman is a superheroine. BB guns are "toys." Fort Knox is a US Army post, very secure. German Sheperd-St. Bernard mixes are real "designer" dog mixes. They're called St. Shepherds._

"You need to take it easier."

"I'm fine."

Scarlett plopped down onto her couch next to Rhett. She had just come back from jogging—or speed-walking, really. But she'd never admit that to Rhett. If he knew how much it still hurt to clock in some cardio-hours, she'd never hear the end of it.

Scarlett kicked her bare feet up onto the ottoman and wiggled her toes. She flicked her eyes to the video monitor and watched the shallow rise and fall of Bonnie's chest. Her own breath slowed. The monitor was a new addition. Scarlett trailed her gaze along the room. Several things were new additions: a bigger flat screen, a Fort Knox level security system, a dog. She shook her head at the St. Bernard-German Shepherd designer mix snoring loudly in the corner.

The night life of the bars and restaurants floated up through the open windows. A crisp November air leaked in with the faint, hollow sounds. Rhett tossed the book he'd been reading—some nonfiction thing the size of a brick—and turned to her. His eyes were the blackest she'd ever seen. And right now, when they were full of that depthless light, she wondered again how she hadn't fallen for him the first day they had met. And then he spoke, in his preachy, professor tone, and she stopped wondering.

"Scarlett, you were shot three times—one of the bullets hit a vital organ. It's only been a couple months. Despite the size of your ego, you're not Wonder Woman. You need to take it easier."

"Vital? I didn't even know what my spleen did until it was taken out of me."

"Willful ignorance of the human anatomy is no excuse for mistreating the body."

"Clever, Rhett. And weren't you ever shot before?"

His eyebrows waved up.

"No."

"Really?"

Rhett shifted closer to her. His fingers started dancing on her neck. These minutes of open conversation and casual caresses were still fresh, still tender. The constant drip-drip of medicine into their veins. Scarlett tilted into his soft tap dance of touch.

"Not unless you count my brother's BB gun."

Scarlett squinted at him. His hand stilled.

"You have a brother?"

"Yup."

"A full-brother—not some half-brother you met one time at a family reunion."

"That would be nice, but nope. Rick's a full brother."

Scarlett looked at the wall and looked at him, looked at the wall and looked back at him. A laugh played around his lips. She swept a finger across her temple. Exasperated was an understatement.

"You do realize I know nothing about you."

Rhett slid his hand down her arm and wound his fingers through hers.

"You know I have a sister."

"True, and since you're alive, I assume you have a mom and dad, too."

His soft chuckle mellowed into a sigh.

"What do you want to know?"

"I don't know. Let's start at the beginning."

"I will begin my life with the beginning of my life," he muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing," he shrugged. His eyes adopted a far-off look. "Okay…I have a son."

'What!" Scarlett yelled, immediately gearing up for a blow-out, blood tangoing through her veins. And then she caught his smarmy wink.

"I'm joking. I mean, I'm sure I've slipped one or two past the goalie but as far as I know…Bonnie was my first."

Scarlett creaked out a groan and Rhett drawled on, squeezing her hand. Warmth spread from her palm to her toes.

"There's not really much to tell. My family's rich—bootleg and moonshine money cleaned up and invested. But that was my great-grandfather's doing. Let's just say he wasn't welcome in the mansion he'd built by the time he died. And how perceptive of you, I do have parents. My mom's name is Carol. My dad's name was Robert—"

"Was?"

"He died of stomach cancer." Rhett counted on his hand. "His funeral was four years ago. It was on a summer day when a plastic film of heat slicks over everything and everyone. It was miserable. I remember I called you, but it was during one of the times you hated me, just about a month before the auction. I don't even think you answered."

Guilt nipped at her. Guilt and sadness. Scarlett brushed the image of her own dad away. It still hurt to think about him. She guessed it always would. Five years since Ellen's funeral and Scarlett still occasionally picked up her phone to call and ask her mom a question.

"I'm sorry about your dad, hon."

"Don't be. I wasn't. I hated him," he lightly said.

Scarlett tried not to broadcast her surprise, and she really didn't want to go any nearer to talking about dads and their deaths. She wasn't there yet. The lump dissolved in her throat. By sheer will.

"Still Rhett, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you."

He half-smiled and kissed her. It was short and deep, leaving her with a tingle on her lips and in her stomach.

"You are now." He leaned back, playing with her fingers, and took up his life story. "My parents divorced when I was thirteen and Rick was eleven. Rory—my sister—and yes, we're all 'r's'—had been a save the marriage pregnancy. She was only one when the custody battles started. She was eighteen when they ended."

"Oh, that's horrible."

Rhett rolled up his shoulders and beat their interlocked hands against his knee.

"Rick sided with dad. Rory sided with herself. And I…I sided with my mom—"

"A mama's boy. I knew it."

Scarlett bumped her shoulder into his. Rhett nodded in an over-the-top way. He licked his lips and studied her face, his gaze suddenly serious.

"What would you say to meeting them?"

Scarlett tried to name the emotion in his eyes. It was too rich to describe, something elemental.

"I'd like that."

A grin spread all over his face. Scarlett couldn't help but respond in kind. Her smiles were rarer than they used to be, but gradually, they were coming back.

"Thanksgiving's a couple weeks away," Rhett said. "We could host it. Invite both our families."

"Are you offering to cook?"

"I'm offering to pay someone to cater, if that's what it takes, as long as I get one homemade pie."

Scarlett did a quick, more pointed survey of her condo. It was a decent size but the fire department would cite them if they tried to squeeze both their families into the space. Her eyes zoned in on the dozing dog. The mutt had to count for two occupants all by himself.

"Are you offering to pay for a banquet hall, too?"

"That's an option." He paused. "Or we could just move into our house."

Scarlett whipped her head back toward him, ready to elbow him for kidding her again. His expression stopped her.

"You're not joking," she said. And that was all she could say. His random aside had completely stumped her.

Rhett held her gaze, brushing her bangs out of her face, and shook his head.

"No. I bought it for a wedding present."

His voice had taken on an extra layer. Scarlett's knees started to tremble as he slid off the couch. The air thickened. He reached for the hand he wasn't already holding and knelt in front of her.

"You know me Scarlett. You're the only one that does. And after everything, you still want to know me better. Marry me? I don't want to know anyone else. I haven't since I first met you."

Scarlett still couldn't speak. Tears had taken over her tongue. But she could, and did, nod.

~AGW~

A few stubborn leaves clung to the nude branches. The warm December sun gilded the scene with gold tinsel. The small reception overflowed with the natural beauty of an outdoor location, the colors faded and the luxury hushed.

Scarlett looked around her. The wedding wasn't the fanfare that she had once envisioned, when as a teenager she had watched and rewatched rom-coms with her soccer teammates and fantasized about million-dollar bridal budgets and royal pomp. It was elegant and muted. Pork had given her away in a rustic church. The priest had been an old-family friend. Only a select group had attended the actual service. Melanie and Mammy had wept quietly in the pews. Rhett had smiled and Scarlett, Scarlett had watched, as she was doing now.

Her green eyes drifted. The mild breeze dimpled her ivory silk gown. The cool flush of the air pressed against her skin. The invisible wind was the only thing she felt. The sensation mirrored her thoughts. Out of all the faces in the crowd, she only saw the ones that weren't there: Brent laughing and standing beside Stu, her mom scolding a lazy server back in line with a soft voice, and her father, her father stepping on her toes and pinching her cheeks as he twirled her around the dance floor.

And as she thought of her father, she remembered. Her dad's voice came back to her, like a melody from her childhood jewelry box. It had been the day Brent had told her he would be enlisting. The first time she had sensed, even temporarily, that her life wouldn't always be what it had always been. Gerald had found her crying on the backyard swing, coasting his motorcycle into the shed so Ellen wouldn't see it. In his thick brogue he had patted Scarlett on the back and promised, his blue eyes clear, "It doesn't matter what tomorrow holds. And yesterday only matters if we let it, and sometimes, we should let it. But you don't need to cry, Scarlett. Today is what matters. Today is always the day you make the choice to live."

At sixteen, her dad's advice hadn't made much sense, but at twenty-five it did. Never would she have imagined that her life would have turned out the way it had. Never. Not her mom's early death. Not her dad's tragic disconnect and momentary reconnect. Not his violent end. None of it. Never.

Scarlett's eye was drawn to the dance floor when Bonnie let out a peal of joy. Rhett spun their daughter in his arms, her sapphire flower-girl dress flapping as wings. Never would Scarlett have imagined Bonnie. Never. Her daughter giggled again and Scarlett smiled. Her heart panged with just a little less pain every time she heard Bonnie laugh.

The fall from the carousel pony had been a blow, for good. It had given Bonnie a severe concussion and a blackout memory of all the events from that terrifying day. Yet the trauma had still scarred her. The memories lurked somewhere in her young mind, resurfacing as nightmares. Bonnie was needier. Clingier. Whinier. But, like her parents, she was healing. She was adapting. She was changing to fit in with her changed world.

The daddy-daughter dance ended. Bonnie pattered off toward Dilcey. Scarlett didn't let herself think about the other daughter that might have been on her way. Still might-have-beens are hard to forget. They're too much like have-beens.

Scarlett lifted her face into the wind and narrowed her eyes. Rhett strode toward her. His face glowed bronze in the amber sunlight. His opal eyes glittered. He was the biggest never of them all. Never would she have imagined—could she have imagined—him.

He stopped in front of her and put out his hand.

"May I have this dance Mrs. Butler?"

Scarlett curved her lips into a smirk.

"No."

"No?"

"No," she said, placing her hand into his. "You can have all the dances."

Rhett pulled her into his arms and onto the floor. His body rippled against hers. The music swelled. She leaned into his scent. The song, the feel, the smells of the moment washed over Scarlett. Her pulse quickened. Today…today she had chosen to live.

_Note: Thanks for those who have stuck with me. Thanks to those who came back. Thanks to those who delurk (loved that phrase and I am curious to know what all you lurkers do think). Thanks to those who review, the constants: Helen, LMS, Melody, Anna, Chris, Amaranthe, Diana, several "guests" and those who are more recent or regular: Joyce, South, Gbella, Lottie, Lovegwtw. I'm sorry if I missed you. Speaking of...I miss Ondine. But I think she might still be reading, so I'll say, thanks. _

_This story ended up with more of myself in it than any of the others. I guess it was inevitable. My hardships and heartaches haven't been exactly like this Scarlett's, but like most of us, I've had my share of sorrows._

_The epilogue will be short and very snappy. A flash forward instead of a flashback. This chapter, to me, is the "end."_


	28. Chapter 28

_Chapter 28: Epi-epi-epilogue_

_Previous on AGW: Rhett and Scarlett marry (27); a few other "related" moments. _

_Question: What is England's greatest gift to the world? Answer: America (ALA Stephen Colbert to Hugh Laurie)_

_Why? Because I thought it was hilarious, and I know there are a bunch of Brits who read my stories. But also, as a reminder that while GWTW has many a universal themes and archetypal aspects, it really is an american story (and I use the lower-case expressly...I mean it as an adjective). Happy reading and thanks for the reviews. All reviews included (as in the near couple hundred that are saved on my desktop) this is just about at half a grand, which is fun. So thanks. I really am grateful to all of you who review, even if you express a differing opinion (which by the way guest...I don't get necessarily bored with my stories...I just get sick of them...But very apt observation.)_

_Cheers!_

* * *

"Rhett! Wake up!"

Scarlett shook his shoulder and shot up, yanking the sheets up with her. He flung a heavy arm across her waist, mumbling something that sounded like garbled French.

"Rhett!" She smacked his back.

Nothing.

"Rhett!" She smacked it again.

"Itched O'Reilly."

"What!"

"It's too early," he grumbled, leaning up onto his elbow.

The moonlight drifted in through their window and cast shadows on his face. His eyes rippled in the semi-dark. And she could tell he heard it too. He turned his head toward the hollow sound.

"Who's at the front door?"

"I don't know. That's why I woke you up."

Sliding his palms down his face he sighed and rolled out of the bed. She threw the covers off and jumped up. Rhett stretched on a shirt and Scarlett grabbed the Maglight from the bedside table drawer.

"What are you doing?"

He cracked his neck and waved a finger at the heavy-duty flashlight she was clutching like a baseball bat. The thump-thump pounded on and on from downstairs. Her grip tightened.

"I don't want to get into the closet and unlock the guns," she said.

He mussed his hair and shook his head, shuffling out into the hall. She followed and caught up to him.

"Police use these things as beater sticks."

Rhett halted. His eyebrows arched up.

"If they're knocking, babe, I don't think it's someone who wants to break into our house and brutally murder us. Criminals are dumb, but usually not that dumb."

He smirked tiredly and walked off. Scarlett dropped her arms to her side. The Maglight was cold against her thigh. She glared and trailed his steps.

Floorlights sprinkled light onto the carpet. They passed Bonnie's room in silence. The door was ajar. Her little girl snores harmonized with the mellow gurgle of the fish tank. Scarlett was glad the knocking hadn't woken her five-year old up. Quietly she shut Bonnie's door and went down the stairs.

Rhett was already at the front door, unlocking the deadbolt. She drew up right behind him. The banging stopped. The cold night air whooshed across her face and stung her eyes when he opened the door. She gasped and the flashlight clunked to the floor.

"Tony?"

Her high-school friend stood on the porch. His hair whipped in the wind and his black eyes glittered. He didn't even spare her a second glance.

"I need your help," he said to Rhett.

Rhett's jaw clenched and he studied Tony's hard face. Scarlett swiveled her head back and forth. A tug of familiar tension twisted in her gut. A slap of comprehension rocked her brain. Her eyes flashed at her husband.

"You said you were out! You said you were out!"

Both men looked at her. Rhett threw up his hands. Tony touched her arm.

"I am!"

"He is!"

They said in unison. Scarlett screwed on her meanest glare and shook Tony off. She jabbed her finger at her friend.

"You don't touch me. What? Did John Wilkes recruit you too?"

He didn't answer. Not that she gave him the chance. She whipped her head around and jabbed her finger at Rhett.

"And you. If you're out, why is Tony on my doorstep, in the middle of the night?"

Rhett flicked his eyes at Tony and Scarlett snapped her fingers in his face.

"Hey—I'm right here. Don't look at him and send him some secret spy eye-blink or whatever. Answer me, or you're sleeping in the doghouse with Cuddles—which by the way, I'm going to say it again: Worst guard dog ever."

Tony started to speak but Rhett held up his hand. His eyes never wavered from his wife's face.

"I am out. You have to trust me."

She wound her arms across her chest and folded her lips together. Her breath was stilted. Her lungs were tight. He put out his hand and squeezed her forearm.

"But I still know things. I still have contacts. Let me do this."

He squeezed her other arm. His ring pressed into her flesh. It was warm. He never took it off. Slowly she blew out her breath.

"You have two minutes."

"I only need one," he said and kissed her briefly on the mouth.

She faced Tony.

"You. Be safe. Please."

He grinned and seemed a little more like Friday-Night-Fun Fontaine again. She hugged him. He smelled like gasoline and grass.

"You look great, Car-Car," he laughed into her ear.

She pulled away and turned to Rhett.

"One minute."

He nodded and she left them, and the flashlight, by the door. Suddenly she was exhausted. She trudged up the stairs and down the hall. Her heart flopped weirdly against her ribs. The adrenaline wasn't completely out of her system.

She went to the bathroom and when she came out a few minutes later Rhett was waiting for her in their bed. Relief oozed out of her. He smiled, his teeth white against the dark of his skin. She smiled quietly in return and took a step forward.

That's when it happened.

Water gushed onto the floor. Scarlett looked down at the pool at her feet. Rhett ran to her side.

"I guess I was wrong," he said, still staring at the fluid trickling down her legs. He raised his sparkling eyes to her face. "It wasn't too early."

Scarlett shook her head at him. The first round of contractions was starting to tear through her abdomen.

"I'll get some towels," she panted. "You get the bag. And bring the Maglight."

"Why?"

He was already jogging toward the closet. She waddled toward the bathroom.

"Because at some point I'm going to want to beat you."

He laughed. She groaned. The pain had just gone from 10 mph to 100 mph. Rhett had better hurry. This boy was coming fast.


End file.
